Thread: The deficit breakdown pie chart

That is not a pie chart son.

Originally Posted by Danny

This is what I've been searching for forever. A pie-chart detailing exactly what factors have caused the US deficit. This chart is so important because Republicans regularly tout that somehow Obama responsible added to the deficit. It would appear that 90-95% of the budget deficit for the next decade are Bush era events and policies. This chart answers the false allegations and no further description is necessary. If Bush and the Republicans had not been in power, its likely there wouldn't even be a deficit.

President Obama Largely Inherited Today?s Huge Deficits — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

I don't wanna' shit in your Wheaties, Danny, but that's not a pie chart.

Pie charts are round.

You know... like a pie...

1. That's not a pie chart.

2. That chart does not show the Bush Era events being 90-95% of anything.

Cute Danny... shame that the 'Bush era tax cuts' expire at the end of the year.

Also their effect shown here is complete bullshit. Static modeling never works...

But you know that, right?

Furthermore the money that was not taken due to the Bush tax cuts is not your money. Stop pretending you have the right to spend it.

See son, this here is a pie chart.

*laughs heartily*

mateys, mateys, mateys...

if the big rebuttal to the besieged Danny be that he misnamed a graph a pie chart, so be it. imma sure he'd concede that point.

now...regardin' the report;

Some critics charge that the new policies pursued by President Obama and the 111th Congress generated the huge federal budget deficits that the nation now faces. In fact, the tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the economic downturn together explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years (see Figure 1).

*nod nod*

- MeadHallPirate

Originally Posted by MeadHallPirate

*laughs heartily*

mateys, mateys, mateys...

if the big rebuttal to the besieged Danny be that he misnamed a graph a pie chart, so be it. imma sure he'd concede that point.

now...regardin' the report;

- MeadHallPirate

The Bush Era Tax Cut costs shown in that chart after fiscal 2011 are a work of fiction:

Most of the Bush tax cuts expire after December 2010 (partway through fiscal 2011). We added the cost of extending them, along with continuing AMT relief, from estimates prepared by CBO and JCT.[14] We did not assume extension of the temporary tax provisions enacted in ARRA. Together, the tax cuts account for $3.4 trillion of the deficits over the 2009-2019 period. Finally, we added the extra debt-service costs caused by the Bush-era tax cuts, amounting to $1.9 trillion over the period and an astonishing $350 billion in 2019 alone.

Originally Posted by MeadHallPirate

*laughs heartily*

mateys, mateys, mateys...

if the big rebuttal to the besieged Danny be that he misnamed a graph a pie chart, so be it. imma sure he'd concede that point.

If somebody can't understand the intricacies of a fucking pie-chart, it's doubtful that person can understand anything more complex...

Of course the underlying assumption in the projections is that another war, economic downturn, tax cut, spending increase, oil price hike or another economic shock does not occur.

Projections and budgets are like weather forecasts, the nearer they are and the simpler the circumstances the better the forecast, long range and complex systems only produce forecasts as good as the model and underlying assumptions.

Forecasting the weather for one location this afternoon is easy, forecasting the weather for an entire region of a country next week is another thing entirely.

Same with budget forecasts, tomorrow for your household is easy, several years from now for an economy as complex as the US is another thing entirely.

These are little more than educated guesses and the underlying assumptions need to be clearly stated and understood before the numbers have any meaning.

That chart was also made last December and does not account at all for Obama's spending during 2009 (his programs) or his new budget and the NEW budget deficit projections.

From the link posted by Danny:

"Technical Note

Baseline projections depict the likely path of the federal budget if current policies remain unchanged. We base our estimates on CBO’s latest ten-year projections, published in August 2009, with several adjustments to reflect what will happen if we continue current tax and spending policies.

Specifically, our baseline assumes that Congress will continue the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that are scheduled to expire after 2010; that it will renew certain other so-called “tax extenders” such as the research and development tax credit; and that it will continue relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT). Our baseline also assumes that Congress will continue to defer scheduled cuts in payments for Medicare providers, as it routinely has in recent years, and instead provide doctors with a payment increase based on the Medicare Economic Index. We also account for a gradual phase-down of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and unanticipated natural disasters. We detailed all of those adjustments in a September 2009 CBPP report. [8] Finally, we have adjusted those numbers to put outlays associated with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on a cash basis — as reported in the Monthly Treasury Statement (MTS), although CBO prefers a different budgetary treatment — and to incorporate the actual 2009 deficit published in the MTS."

Ok so its not a pie chart...my bad. The fact remains that Obama's policies (Stimulus) had added the thinest line thats almost invisible to the deficit over the next 10 years.

Only a true partisan lemming can look at the state of the US economy and claim it is entirely the fault of one party or administration.

We've been spending more than we brought it for several decades, under both Republican and Democratic administrations and congresses. All this finger pointing is just political theater to keep the easily distracted playing the "my team is better" game instead of looking at the alarming state of the economy in an objective fashion.

Matt