What the Austerity Hysterics Don't Want You to Know: Deficit Down $200 Billion

Because the deficit going down in the absence of the scorched-economy destruction of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and all public services that don't benefit rich people that the hysterics demand tends to undermine their argument reveals their real agenda.

Firedoglake:

How about that:

The federal government’s fiscal year 2012 has come to a close, and CBO estimates that the federal budget deficit for the year was about $1.1 trillion, approximately $200 billion lower than the shortfall recorded in 2011. The 2012 deficit was equal to 7.0 percent of gross domestic product, CBO estimates, down from 8.7 percent in 2011, 9.0 percent in 2010, and 10.1 percent in 2009

So that means we do not have to enact those profoundly harmful austerity measures with cuts to entitlements that target the poor and elderly right?

Oh you know that isn’t the point, the point is to make sure they happen anyway, the villagers will not be able to live without it

Digby:

Building up projected long term deficit as the greatest threat to America's future, especially in the middle of an economic slump, is truly malicious. At a time when smart people should be putting everything they have into figuring out how to create growth and restore a sense of security among the American people, our leaders are tilting at phantom windmills of the distant future. They are basically doing exactly the wrong thing. 

With interest rates at inflation-adjusted less than zero and investors clamoring to borrow from the U.S. Treasury regardless, right now we've got access to trillions of dollars for free. We should be spending like crazy to create 10 million jobs building infrastructure: transportation, renewable energy, education, clean water - you name it.

But that would create the strong, secure middle class that is the last thing the austerity hysterics want.

 

Sherle R. Schwenninger in The Nation:

The bottom line is that Washington has no choice but to borrow and spend for the foreseeable future. The question is how large this borrowing and spending should be, and what form it should take. But that is not the debate the presidential campaign is giving us. Instead, both parties are trying to impress us with their commitment to cutting the deficit. But even modest steps to reduce the deficit in the short to medium term will bring about the kind of premature fiscal consolidation that prolonged the Great Depression when FDR decided to cut spending and raise taxes in 1937.