Tag: Federal Deficit

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Federal Tax Revenues Set Record Through May; Feds Still Running $436B Deficit

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Federal Tax Revenues Set Record Through May; Feds Still Running $436B Deficit
June 12, 2014 – 11:20 AM\
By Terence P. Jeffrey\

( CNSNews.com) – Federal tax revenues continue to run at a record pace (in inflation-adjusted dollars) in fiscal 2014, as the federal government’s total receipts for the fiscal year closed May at an unprecedented $1,934,919,000,000, according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.

Despite record revenue, the federal government still ran a deficit of $436.382 billion in the first eight months of the fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2013 and will end on Sept. 30, 2014.

In the month of May alone, the federal government ran a deficit of $129.971 billion–bringing in $199.889 billion in revenue while spending $329.860 billion.

The White House Office of Management and Budget has estimated that in the full fiscal 2014, the federal government will collect $3.001721 trillion in taxes, spend $3.650526 trillion, running a deficit of $648.805 billion..

https://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/federal-tax-revenues-set-record-through-may-feds-still-running-436b

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GDP Report Confirms We Now Have a $2 Trillion Obama Growth Deficit

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GDP Report Confirms We Now Have a $2 Trillion Obama Growth Deficit
Stephen Moore
May 29, 2014 at 1:15 pm

This morning’s depressing revised calculation of the growth of the economy in the first quarter of 2014 (-1.0 percent) makes it official: The Obama expansion is now $2 trillion short of where we would be if growth in this recovery had matched the Reagan recovery that started in 1982.

That is to say the average family would have about $5,000 more income each year to spend if it were not for this slow recovery.  The Census Bureau reports that median household income is down by $1,800 since this so-called recovery began

Worse, investment plummeted in the first quarter of 2014 by 11.7 percent from the same period in 2013.  That was the biggest decline since the recession ended in 2009.  Without investment, businesses can’t grow and wages won’t rise.  Capital investment by businesses is a strong leading indicator of future prosperity.

The administration was quick to blame the dismal numbers on the cold winter and blizzard conditions in the Midwest and Northeast. But he 2013 growth rate was 1.9 percent, and the rate has been less than 2 percent for more than a year. Under Reagan, the growth rate during the expansion was more than 4 percent.

There are strong signs the economy picked up steam starting in April, but the overall picture of a failed recovery plan is now unmistakable.  We spent $830 billion on a stimulus stuffed with make-work government-jobs programs and programs to pay people to buy new cars, borrowed $6 trillion, launched a government-run health-care system that incentivizes businesses not to hire more workers, raised tax rates on the businesses that hire workers and the investors that finance businesses that hire workers, printed $3 trillion of paper money, shut down an entire industry (coal), and tried to regulate and restrain the one industry that actually is booming (oil and gas).

Is it really a surprise the government is underperforming and this is the worst recovery from recession in 75 years.Ideas do have consequences – especially bad ones.

What good that has come from Obamanomics? Hopefully, we all have relearned a painful lesson that government spending, congressional taxing, Treasury borrowing and Fed printing don’t stimulate the economy. The new GDP report reminds us these battle-tested economic strategies don’t work. For tens of millions of Americans, unfortunately, this is a lesson learned the hard way.

— Stephen Moore is chief economist at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of the New York Times bestseller An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of States.

https://blog.heritage.org/2014/05/29/gdp-report-confirms-now-2-trillion-obama-growth-deficit/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social

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Face it, liberals: Obamacare will increase the federal deficit

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Face it, liberals: Obamacare will increase the federal deficit

David Hogberg • | FEBRUARY 14, 2014 AT 7:17 PM

Liberals have accepted that Obamacare will increase the federal deficit. They just don’t know it yet.

When the Congressional Budget Office released its Budget and Economic Outlook on Feb. 4, which was quite devastating for Obamacare, liberal commentators were desperate to find the pony in it. Many of them touted claims that the report shows that Obamacare will reduce the deficit.

What the report actually did was refer to a previous CBO report showing that, from 2013-2022, Obamacare reduces the deficit by a cumulative $109 billion. That’s true in the “balance sheet” method that CBO must use to evaluate Obamacare or any other piece of legislation. In other words, the CBO can only count the revenues Obamacare raises against the benefits it must pay out.

Yet Obamacare has impacts beyond those that appear on a balance sheet. If it influences the economy negatively, it can also affect the budget. And that is exactly what the CBO found.

Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and exchange subsidies will encourage some employees to work fewer hours. Because Medicaid and exchange subsidies are based on income and decline as one’s income rises, the CBO anticipates workers will reduce their hours in order to maintain their Obamacare benefits. By 2024, those reduced hours will reach the equivalent of 2.5 million jobs.

https://washingtonexaminer.com/face-it-liberals-obamacare-will-increase-the-federal-deficit/article/2544076