CBO v. Obama Administration: Which Deficit Numbers To Use?

• DawnTreader

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  Posted: 22 March 2009 02:53 PM

  The Congressional Budget Office is forecasting federal budget deficits over the next decade of $9.3 trillion. The Obama Administration is forecasting deficits of about $7 trillion. Does it make a real difference considering the size of the numbers? If so, which numbers should be used for budget and tax planning purposes?

       

• Mav

  

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  Posted: 22 March 2009 04:11 PM #1

  CBO is nonpartisan, right?  Unless there’s a record of poor accuracy/analysis, I’d go with the nonpartisans over the partisans (no matter the party) every time.

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• MacCube

  

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  Posted: 22 March 2009 04:23 PM #2

  I found This interesting when talking about the number Trillion. It provides a good prospective on just how large of a number it really is.

  The U.S. government spends more than the entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Australia, China and Spain combined. If you laid one dollar bills end to end, you could make a chain that stretches from earth to the moon and back again 200 times before you ran out of dollar bills! One trillion dollars would stretch nearly from the earth to the sun. It would take a military jet flying at the speed of sound, reeling out a roll of dollar bills behind it, 14 years before it reeled out one trillion dollar bills.

   

  And This provides a visual prospective of what a Trillion dollars would look like.

  
  “A Trillion here, a trillion there, and after a while you start talking about a lot of money.”

  
  :apple:

       

• litespeed

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  Posted: 22 March 2009 07:17 PM #3

  I don’t think it matters. It’s going to be what it is.

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• JimDE

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  Posted: 23 March 2009 11:04 AM #4

  DawnTreader - 22 March 2009 05:53 PM

  ... Does it make a real difference considering the size of the numbers? ....

  Yeah it makes a difference. You have to pay all those printers at the mint all that extra overtime. 

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