The Congressional Budget Office announced recently that the federal budget deficit for fiscal year ending 9/30/13 will be approximately $640 billion. That is much less than the $900 billion that was projected earlier. Increased federal revenues and pay back to the U.S. Treasury for the TARP program was responsible for the decline in the projected budget deficit according to the CBO.
Once again it is a democratic administration who's policies are working that is bringing back some sanity to the government's fiscal house that the Bush administration and the republican controlled congress destroyed during their control. Today's republicans in the U.S. House and Senate hate to see a democratic administration doing well and continue to block the Presidents call to do more to keep the economy going strong.
The republicans unAmerican ideology of cutting federal spending to balance the federal budget is a two part fairy tale. The very first fairy tale is that no republican President has cut year to year federal spending in over 50 years even when they had the opportunity to do so. The second republican fairy tale of cutting taxes for corporate America and the wealthy to create jobs just does not happen.
The most important action congress can do to move the economy forward and create more jobs there by keeping the economy moving is to pass the President's job program that the U.S. House has been sitting on for well over a year. That would not only reduce the unemployment numbers dramatically, it would also increase federal revenue with more people employed and would also reduce the federal deficit more and move towards a balanced budget. The republicans know that and that is why they are sitting on their cans. The President needs to start kicking those cans.
This commentary written by John Lucia.
