The most meaningful summary of Obama's most recent (in a long series) speech, which this time was only 14 minutes delayed: the US Deficit increased $112.5 million during the president's latest teleprompted appearance (9m deficit $973 bn ; $108 bn / mo ; $3.6 bn / day ; $150 mm / hr ; $2.5 mm / minute). Since US debt increases at a rate about 30% higher than the actual deficit, the actual new debt incurred was about $146 million. And that's all you need to know about the latest episode in the political tragicomedy charade.
Some other observations from the CBO on the May 2011 budget.
Net interest on the public debt grew the most, rising by $31 billion (or 18 percent) above the outlays recorded through June 2010, primarily because of the large increase in the public debt during the past year. In contrast, defense spending increased by 1 percent through June, considerably below the three-quarter average of 9 percent experienced over the past 10 years.
The three largest entitlement programs continued to grow. Compared with outlays in the first nine months of 2010, spending for Medicaid grew by $13 billion (or 6 percent), and spending for Social Security and Medicare combined grew by $33 billion (or about 4 percent each). For the latter two programs, that growth was less than the average of 6 percent and 8 percent, respectively, experienced in the same period of the year over the past 10 years.
Offsetting those increases in outlays were declines inseveral areas, including net payments to GSEs (down by $38 billion, or 93 percent), deposit insurance (down by $32 billion, excluding receipts from prepayments of premiums), and unemployment benefits (down by $29 billion, or 23 percent). Spending for “Other Activities” excluding deposit insurance and reestimates of credit subsidies rose by $21 billion (or 2.5 percent).
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