Your federal deficit: good news and bad

My blogging buddy Douglas Elmendorf, director of the Congressional Budget Office offers a bit of good news on the federal deficit, though he doesn't call it good news. Numbers, after all are the perfect objective fact, they're neither good nor bad, just what they are.

So far, the federal deficit is down compared to last year. Down by about $80 billion. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's still about $1 trillion. That's the amount we spend over the amount we took in for the first nine months of the year that ends Sept.30.

Part of the good news is that corporate tax revenues are up like $30 billion or so. That means businesses are earning a profit and paying more taxes, or as Elmy notes, they got fewer tax right offs for capital losses, depreciation and such.

The Dougster's a swell blogger and I have a link to his blog on my blog site (and people wonder what I do for fun!).

Anyway, he has a quick succinct way of telling you the deal on the budget. Defense spending up 6 percent over last year as is a lot of the social program spending.

We're also getting more money for the Federal Reserve because it's buying riskier investments in housing (isn't that reassuring), and spending for the Trouble Assets Program is down.

So, all in all, the deficit's down, not by much, but maybe that's a start.

Here's the short and easy to read summary of how we're spending and how much we've got coming in.



http://www.cbo.gov/aboutcbo/organization/od.htm