US Set To Have $1 Trillion Budget Deficit For Fourth Straight Year
By KUNA
A new budget report released Tuesday shows the United States is on track to run a USD one billion dollar deficit for the fourth consecutive year.
The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the fiscal 2012 deficit would rise to USD 1.07 trillion from it’s earlier estimate of USD 973 billion made last August. The U.S. posted USD 1.3 trillion deficits in each of the past two years after a record USD 1.4 trillion deficit in fiscal 2009.
The first wave of statements from lawmakers had a familiar ring as each party cast blame on the other.
“Four straight years of trillion-dollar deficits, no credible plan to lift the crushing burden of debt,” said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, a Republican. “The president and his party’s leaders have fallen short in their duty to tackle our generation’s most pressing fiscal and economic challenges.”
“We will not solve this problem unless both sides, Democrats and Republicans, are willing to move off their fixed positions and find common ground,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat. “Republicans must be willing to put revenue on the table.”
The study also predicts modest economic growth of 2 percent this year and forecasts that the unemployment rate will remain above 8 percent this year and next. That is based on an assumption that President Barack Obama will fail to win renewal of payroll tax cuts and jobless benefits by the end of next month.
That jobless rate is higher than the rates that contributed to losses by Presidents Jimmy Carter (7.5 percent) and George H.W. Bush (7.4 percent).
The study predicts unemployment to remain above roughly 5 percent – until 2016.
The agency also predicts that unemployment will remain at 7 percent or above through 2015.
