Federal Budget Deficit Tops $1 Trillion for the First Time
The Treasury Department says the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.
FOX News
Nine months into the fiscal year, the federal deficit has topped $1 trillion for the first time.
The imbalance is intensifying fears about higher interest rates and inflation, and already pressuring the value of the dollar. There’s also concern about trying to reverse the deficit — by reducing government spending or raising taxes — in the midst of a harsh recession.
The Treasury Department said Monday that the deficit in June totaled $94.3 billion, pushing the total since the budget year started in October to nearly $1.1 trillion.
The deficit has been propelled by the huge sum the government has spent to combat the recession and financial crisis, combined with a sharp decline in tax revenues. Paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan also is a major factor.
The country’s soaring deficits are making Chinese and other foreign buyers of U.S. debt nervous, which could make them reluctant lenders down the road. It could force the Treasury Department to pay higher interest rates to make U.S. debt attractive longer-term.
“These are mind boggling numbers,” said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at the Smith School of Business at California State University. “Our foreign investors from China and elsewhere are starting to have concerns about not only the value of the dollar but how safe their investments will be in the long run.”
Government spending is on the rise to address the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and an unemployment rate that has climbed to 9.5 percent.
Congress already approved a $700 billion financial bailout and a $787 billion economic stimulus package to try and jump-start a recovery, and there is growing talk among some Obama administration officials that a second round of stimulus may be necessary.
This has many Republicans and deficit hawks worried that the U.S. could be setting itself up for more financial pain down the road if interest rates and inflation surge. They also are raising alarms about additional spending the administration is proposing, including its plan to reform health care.
President Barack Obama and other administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have said the U.S. is committed to bringing down the deficits once the country has emerged from the current recession and financial crisis.
Wild Thing’s comment………
And the socialist/communist Obama wants to keep borrowing and printing money to make the debt worse — all to kill the private sector and get hold of as much taxpayer wealth he can to BUY POWER AND CONTROL.
Obama’s goal is to destroy the economy and he is doing just that.
The Moon is about 240,000 miles from earth. 1 trillion dollars is 1,000,000,000,000.00. A dollar bill is almost 6 inches long. If you were to lay dollar bills out end to end. 1 trillion of them would cover 94.7 million miles. If you could build a bridge with dollar bills you could make 394 bridges to the moon. The circumference of the earth is 25,000 miles at the equator, that means every 63.4 miles there would be a bridge to the moon, or 16 bridges per time zone.
This is astronomical, and he wants cap and trade and Universal Health Care. If I were the Chinese I’d be a little more than nervous. Now he’s talking about another stimulus…Where’s that going to come from.
Perfect photo caption:
“Dumb and Dumber!”
Mark,oh my gosh!! Thank you Mark WOW!
Darth, heh heh thank you.