Thank you, ace....
Here is the actual interview...broadcast yesterday on CNBC
Part I video
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=555710464&play=1
Thurs. Oct. 11 2007 | 4:02 PM[07:24]
President George Bush discussing the decline in the U.S. deficit, with CNBC's Maria Bartiromo
Part II Video
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?video=555710486&play=1
...and the only true statement in the following, Bush "tribute piece", is highlighted in bold text...(in Clinton's era, new debt dropped to $18 billion annually, there was never a surplus....)
Quote:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g...XO-5AD8S79O000
US Budget Deficit Drops to 5-Year Low
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER – 19 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Bush administration reported Thursday that the federal budget deficit fell to $162.8 billion in the just-completed budget year, the lowest amount of red ink in five years.
The administration credited the president's tax cuts for helping generate record-breaking revenues but warned of an approaching "fiscal train wreck" unless Congress deals with unsustainable growth in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
President Bush, appearing with his economic team to trumpet the news, noted that the deficit turned out to be $81 billion lower than it was projected to be in February. He said the deficit represents 1.2 percent of gross domestic product — less than the average of the last 40 years.
"By keeping taxes low we can grow the economy, and by working with Congress to set priorities we can be fiscally responsible and we can head toward balance," Bush said after the meeting across the street from the White House. "And that's exactly where we're headed."
The deficit for the 2007 budget year that ended on Sept. 30 was 34.4 percent lower than the $248.2 billion deficit recorded in 2006, reflecting faster growth in revenues than in government spending.
Administration officials said the government was on track to accomplish Bush's goal of eliminating the deficit by 2012. But Democrats said the improvement in the deficit this year did not mask the fact that Bush's economic policies transformed the budget surpluses of the Clinton years into record deficits and an unprecedented increase in the national debt.
The debate over the president's signature tax cuts and their affect on the economy are certain to be played out in the coming presidential campaign. Republican candidates are vowing to make permanent Bush's tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of 2010; Democrats want to roll back the tax cuts received by the wealthiest taxpayers.
Both revenues and spending climbed to record levels in 2007. Spending rose by 2.8 percent to $2.73 trillion while revenues rose by a faster 6.7 percent to a record $2.57 trillion, a gain the administration attributed to the economic stimulus from the president's tax cuts.
"This year's budget results further demonstrate how the president's tax relief, combined with spending discipline, has helped promote a sustained economic expansion, which led to revenue growth and resulted in a declining deficit," said White House budget director Jim Nussle.
But administration officials said while the short-term budget deficit was improving, greater efforts were needed to deal with the budgetary pressures that will arise in future years with the approaching retirement of 78 million baby boomers.
"For the sake of our children and grandchildren, Congress should begin to take action to prevent this fiscal train wreck," Nussle said in a statement accompanying the budget figures.
<h3>Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said that Bush would "go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible president ever. The fact is that the nation's debt has exploded on his watch — rising by $3 trillion since 2001, to $9 trillion today."</h3>
Bush recently signed into law a measure increasing the government's borrowing ceiling to $9.815 trillion. It was the fifth debt increase of Bush's presidency. The national debt is the accumulation of the annual deficits.
During the Clinton administration, the federal budget ran a surplus for four consecutive years, something that had not been accomplished for seven decades.
While there were projections that the budget would run up surpluses of $5.6 trillion over the next decade, the bursting of the stock market bubble in 2000, the recession that followed in 2001 and the terrorist attacks, which led to increased military spending to fight wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, pushed the country back into deficit spending.
For 2007, defense spending, including war costs, totaled $529.9 billion, up 6.1 percent from 2006, an increase that outpaced the 2.8 percent rise in overall spending. Paying interest on the national debt also outpaced overall spending growth, rising by 5.9 percent to total $430 billion, making it the fourth-largest spending category.
While the administration contends that Bush's first-term tax cuts helped jump-start economic growth and are contributing to record revenues currently, Democrats dispute that view, saying the tax breaks were tilted to the wealthy and actually have contributed to the record deficits.
The deficit hit an all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion in 2004 and has been coming down since.
The Congressional Budget Office projects that the deficit will improve further in the 2008 budget year, which began on Oct. 1, projecting a decline to $155 billion before the imbalance starts to rise again in 2009.
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...as the debt info in the thread OP clearly shows...not only is the rate of new debt accumulation not lessening, it actually has increased, vs. the amount of last year. It is easy to point to budget deficit reduction, as Bush did, when war expenditures are deliberately not budgeted....they are simply categorized as "off-budget", "supplemental" appropriations that increase the debt each year by hundreds of billions of dollars. It's a nice trick, and the only way to circumvent the untruths is to compare the amount of new debt actually tabulated by the US Treasury....$540 billion since Oct. 1, 2006. vs. just
$18 billion between Oct. 1, 1999 and Sept. 30, 2000....before Bush tax cuts and unsustainably expensive, "war on terror". He can try to hide the fiscal ruin he is causing, but it should be an impeachable offense to lie and to manipulate, so blatantly.