Rebates Push Deficit to Record Highs

2008 June 11
by Kelly

The economic stimulus payments - which qualify more or less as “free money” from the government - pushed the federal budget deficit to an all-time high of $165.9 billion in May.

The increase in the deficit includes $48 billion already paid out of the $168 billion planned payments for the economic stimulus plan.

Receipts for the first eight months of fiscal year have totaled $1.67 trillion, representing a mere 0.3% increase from the same period a year ago. Expenditures, however, are up 9.7% to $1.99 trillion; the spike is largely a combination of the economic stimulus payments and the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The resulting $319.4 billion deficit is more than twice the $148.5 billion deficit for the same period in 2007.

Grave economic news, for sure. And we still have $120 billion in stimulus payments to go…

7 Comments leave one →
2008 June 11
Matty

Just another quick fix at the expense of the long term health of our country. Our government and citizens have lived beyond their means for decades, is it any surprise that the US dollar is falling like a rock?

2008 June 12

Its like duct taping the front bumper back onto a rust bucket. It will get you down the road a few more miles but it will fall back off and you will run over it.

2008 June 15

[...] increased revenue beats the option -cutting spending for programs. This is important because unlike the federal government, states may not operate at a [...]

Pingback
2008 June 20

[...] No. I don’t think a second check is in the cards - for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is the economy. [...]

Pingback
2008 June 26

[...] and Means Committee Chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) claims that the offsets are necessary in order to prevent the deficit from getting bigger: “We’ll be able to say we didn’t borrow the money and we didn’t put this [...]

Pingback
2008 June 28

[...] The deficit for the current fiscal year (as of last month) is $319.4 billion, more than twice what it was for the same period in 2007. [...]

Pingback
2008 August 1

[...] a point of information, TAX GIRL Kelly Phillips Erb reported in her post “Rebates Push Deficit to Record Highs” that “The economic stimulus payments - which qualify more or less as “free [...]

Pingback

Leave A Comment

Note: You can use basic XHTML in your comments. Your email address will never be published.

Subscribe to this comment feed via RSS