CBO Report Further Proof of President's Mismanagement
Today, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the federal budget deficit for Fiscal Year 2004, which ends on September 30th, will be a record $422 billion. When the Social Security surplus is not used to artificially mask the real size of the deficit, the actual budget deficit for 2004 is $574 billion. This is deeply troubling. Sadly, President Bush and Congressional Republicans have no real plan to rein in the red ink. When President Bush took office 3½ years ago, he inherited a 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion and we were paying down the national debt. Today, that 10-year budget surplus has been turned into a projected deficit of $4.7 trillion. This is a record that no one should be proud of. One immediate solution would be to roll back Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of Americans. It is unfair to ask the middle class to carry this burden.