A fiscal fish story

Red State celebrates the new budget numbers:

A new estimate for the federal budget in FY 2006 was released today, and it has great news for Americans and Republicans interested in lowering the debt...

Then when the 2005 FY budget was released, it forecast an increase up to $427 billion. When the numbers came in at the end of the year, though, the actual deficit was down again to $319 billion!

Back in February when the FY2006 budget was released, an increase to $423 billion was forecast. Now, however, due to larger than anticipated tax revenue from corporations and wealthy Americans, the estimate has been decreased to just $296 billion.

In all fairness to Red State, they are calling for decreased spending, though El Presidente consistently fails to heed their sage advice. But they make 2 mistakes in cheering his latest fiscal fish story: they believe the numbers, and they believe the numbers are good.

Because debt doesn't care if it's duly recorded in a budget - try it with your family, you'll see - budget numbers do not tell the real story. The actual Treasury debt for FY05 started (Sep04) at $7379 billion and ended (Sep05) at $7933 billion, for a true debt increase of $554 billion, 50% larger than the $319 billion "budget deficit" claimed by Bush.

The FY06 debt increase from Sep05 has gone from $7933b to $8408b, or $475b in 10 months. If that rate ($47.5b/mo) continues for the next 2 months, the actual debt increase will be $570b, almost twice the $296b claimed by Bush.

In other words, the actual fiscal deficit over those 2 years is not ~$600b and falling, it's more than $1000b and rising.

Decreased deficits are better than increased ones - all things being equal - and so I'm happy deficit numbers are down. But this is not "great news for Republicans interested in lowering the debt," because as Treasury Department numbers show, the debt is piling up faster than the government can sweep it under the rug. And dishonesty in the budget process is hardly a reason for rejoicing, no matter what color your state.