March 16, 2012
President Obama’s 2013 budget would add $3.5 trillion to annual deficits through 2022, according to a new estimate from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).
It also would raise the deficit next year by $365 billion, according to the nonpartisan office.
The CBO estimate is in sharp contrast to White House claims last month that the Obama budget would reduce deficits by $3.2 trillion over the next decade.
The differences between the estimates from CBO and the White House budget office are attributable to different baselines and economic assumptions, and a big reason CBO expects the deficit to spike sharply under Obama's budget is that CBO's baseline assumes all the Bush-era tax rates will expire at the end of 2012.
Obama wants to continue the middle-class tax cuts, something reflected in his budget.
CBO also compares Obama's budget to a different baseline in which the budget office assumes Congress and the administration decides to avoid big tax increases and deep spending cuts, something both branches have repeatedly done in the past.
No comments:
Post a Comment