Feb

It’s that time of year again:

Yesterday President Bush released his 2006 budget, which is projecting to have a $423 billion dollar deficit. Immediately the Presidents critics cried about how this would be a “record” deficit should we hit that $423 billion dollar number. They are correct that it would be a “record” but when basing it on today’s dollars anything is an eventual record, even the cost of a slice of pizza.

The way to truly compare these things is as a percentage of GDP, which is what economists use. Basing the projected deficit against GDP we would see that it should end up being around 3.2%, below the 5% mark economists consider as a point of concern. Some may recall I wrote about this same topic back in September for our monthly Record, when the government revised down its deficit projection for 2005. We should recall that the 2005 deficit projection was originally $427 billion before it ended up coming in well under $400 billion thanks to higher tax receipts due to the President successful economic policy muting critics then as it will again later this year.

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