Obama Underestimated 2012 Deficit by About Half a Trillion Dollars

“In President Obama’s first budget, entitled (with no apparent sense of irony) “A New Era of Responsibility,” he projected that the federal budget deficit in 2012 would be a rather hefty $581 billion (see summary table S-1). Fast-forwarding three years, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) now projects that it will instead be $1.079 trillion, meaning that, if the CBO is right, Obama was wrong by $498,000,000,000. To put that into perspective, that roughly half-trillion dollar margin of error is more than Obama allocated is this year’s budget for Medicare (see table S-3). Medicare could magically have become free for 2012, and the deficit would still have exceeded Obama’s earlier estimate.”

Via Weekly Standard

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