Tag: OMB

The Exploding Deficit Reaches $1.4 Trillion

Earlier today, CBO released its latest monthly snapshot on the federal budget. The key things you should know are:

  • CBO estimates that the government ran a deficit of almost $1.4 trillion during the first eleven months of the fiscal year (up from $501 billion at this point last year).
  • CBO reiterated its forecast that the full year’s deficit will also come in around $1.4 trillion (September is usually a month of surplus because of strong tax receipts, but CBO apparently thinks this September will be close to break-even.)
  • CBO’s estimate is noticeably lower than the administration’s most recent deficit forecast of $1.58 trillion. If the final numbers next month are in line with CBO’s projections, some commentators will thus spin the full year deficit as good news (“the deficit came in lower than the administration expected”), while others will spin it as bad news (“yikes, the deficit was $1.4 trillion”). (As noted in an earlier post, CBO’s summer update was a bit complicated to interpret because its headline deficit estimate used different accounting for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than the administration used; on an apples-to-apples basis, however, CBO then forecast a deficit of $1.41 trillion.)
  • As shown in the following chart, the deficit has exploded for three main reasons:

Budget Deficit August

Continue reading “The Exploding Deficit Reaches $1.4 Trillion”

OMB’s 2009 Deficit Estimate Is Likely Too High

As expected, the new budget projections from the Office of Management and Budget show an estimated deficit of $1.58 trillion in the current year (which ends on September 30).

In their coverage of the dueling budget releases, many members of the media are noting that this estimate is almost identical to the $1.59 trillion estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office. Thus, it may appear that OMB and CBO reached similar conclusions about this year’s deficit.

That is not correct.

OMB and CBO use different accounting for a growing part of the budget — the federal take-over of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  If you adjust for those accounting differences, an apples-to-apples comparison shows that OMB’s projection of a $1.58 trillion deficit should be compared to a CBO estimate of $1.41 trillion. (For details, see the table on p. 2 and the box on pp. 8-9 of CBO’s report.)

In other words, using identical accounting, CBO is projecting a deficit that is almost $200 billion less than projected by OMB.

Here’s how it works:

Continue reading “OMB’s 2009 Deficit Estimate Is Likely Too High”

More Stimulus Spending Than Originally Projected

Lots of budget news this morning, with the release of the newest projections from the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office.

One headline is that spending on the stimulus will be higher than expected. As reported by Lori Montgomery at the Washington Post (ht EconomistMom):

The $787 billion economic stimulus package President Obama signed earlier this year is likely to cost “tens of billions of dollars” more than expected, helping to drive projections for next year’s budget deficit to $1.5 trillion, White House budget director Peter Orszag told reporters.

With unemployment climbing, costs for a variety of stimulus programs are running higher than anticipated, Orszag said, including expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps and energy grants. In an interview embargoed for release Tuesday morning, Orszag said he could not estimate the overall cost of the package, but he called Republican estimates of $900 billion “slightly high.”

The $900 billion estimate that Peter mentions is reported in this letter from former CBO Director Doug Holtz-Eakin to Republican House Leader John Boehner.

The CBO also addresses this issue in its report (box on pp. 10-11). The box discusses lots of pesky nuances about budget accounting and the timing of payments. Perhaps the most interesting observation, consistent with the OMB quote above, is that:

The higher-than-expected unemployment rate has led CBO to raise its estimates of spending in 2009 for ARRA [i.e., stimulus] provisions that affect unemployment compensation (by $7 billion) and Medicaid (by $1 billion).

In other words, the weaker economy has added $8 billion to stimulus spending in fiscal 2009 alone with, presumably, more to come in fiscal 2010.

These developments further complicate the challenging task of tracking the stimulus.

$9 Trillion in Deficits for 2010 – 2019

If you have bad news to report in our nation’s capital, Friday afternoon in August is a good time.

So what did we learn this afternoon? Well, according to various news services (e.g., Bloomberg and Reuters) the Obama administration is projecting that budget deficits will total about $9 trillion from 2010 – 2019. That figure was released by an unnamed official (the usual practice) in advance of the release of new administration forecasts next Tuesday

That projected ten-year deficit is up about $2 trillion from the administration’s previous forecast, reportedly because of weaker economic assumptions. The new figure is in line with earlier estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, which will release new estimates on Tuesday as well.

As I discussed a few days ago, the administration estimates that the budget deficit this year will total about $1.58 trillion; that figure is not included in the $9 trillion figure, which covers the next ten years.

2009 Budget Deficit: $1.58 Trillion

Next Tuesday is a big day for budget watchers. The Congressional Budget Office will release its updated budget and economic projections in the morning, and the Office of Management and Budget will release its projections later in the day.

CBO isn’t a fan of leaks, so we probably won’t know much about its updated projections until Tuesday. The Obama administration, on the other hand, will likely allow select tidbits out early, as have previous administrations.

Indeed, Bloomberg is already reporting that an administration official told them that this year’s deficit will come in at “$1.58 trillion, about $262 billion less than forecast in May.”

There are several things you should know about this estimate:

  • The $262 billion difference is largely explained by a single factor: no TARP II. The administration’s original budget included a $250 billion placeholder for additional financial stabilization efforts. Happily, that never happened.
  • A second big factor, as reported by Bloomberg, is that spending on bank failures has come in $78 billion lower than originally forecast.
  • That good news is partly offset by the fact that tax revenues are projected to be about $83 billion less than originally forecast (presumably because of the weak economy). All other spending is forecast to be about $17 billion less than originally projected.

In short, the cost of fighting the financial crisis has been much lower than forecast in May, while the rest of the budget has done slightly worse than forecast.

This being Washington, there will be some debate about whether the $1.84 trillion figure from May is the right benchmark for evaluating whether the deficit is lower than forecast. That figure (the “policy deficit”) reflected not only the administration’s expectations about how the economy was affecting the budget, but also the budget impacts of its policy proposals, including the potential TARP II. At the time, the administration also made a second forecast that did not include any policy changes. That “baseline deficit” was $1.62 trillion, almost identical to the new estimate. Folks who use the baseline as a benchmark will thus conclude that the deficit is essentially in line with earlier expectations.

Note: The estimates of this year’s budget deficit will get lots of press (and blog) attention, but they are by no means the most important information in the new projections. The real question is what 2010, 2011, and subsequent years look like. We know the deficits will be scary-looking, but we will have to wait until Tuesday to find out just how scary.