Lockbox Unlocked
After visiting Pew’s site, I wandered over to the CBO where I found the latest Monthly Budget Review. It contains the current CBO (-$477b) and OMB ($-527b) deficit projections. One suprising element is that the administration’s forecast (the OMB number) is $50b higher than the basically non-partisan CBO’s estimate.
More interesting is this table:
|
|||||
CURRENT PROJECTIONS FOR FISCAL YEAR 2004 (Billions of dollars) |
|||||
|
|||||
CBO | OMB | ||||
|
|||||
Receipts | 1,817 | 1,791 | |||
Outlays | 2,294 | 2,319 | |||
Deficit | -477 | -527 | |||
On-budget deficit | -631 | -682 | |||
Off-budget surplus | 154 | 154 | |||
|
|||||
Sources: Office of Management and Budget; CBO. | |||||
|
What is the $154b “off-budget surplus” number? That’s money for the Social Security trust fund. In other words, the progressive income, capital gains, dividend, and corporate taxes are bringing in between $630 and $690 billion less than the government is spending. Only when the money raised by the regressive payroll tax is included does the deficit fall to a mere one-half trillion dollars.
AB