Today, President Cut-the-Deficit-in-Half unveils his newest budget, projecting a deficit of $1.33 trillion.
You’ll recall Obama promising to “cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office.” (Note that many Americans probably heard that and thought he meant to cut the overall, outstanding, now $15.3 trillion debt, not the annual, more than $1 trillion per year deficit.)
You’ll also recall that in 2007, the deficit was… $160 billion. You know, about 12 percent of the total deficit Obama’s budget would create this year.
But, as you undoubtedly know, Obama hasn’t even come close to cutting the deficit in any significant way in any year of his presidency:
Fiscal 2009 budget deficit (technically the last year under Bush):$1.41 trillion.
2010 budget deficit: $1.3 trillion.
2011 budget deficit: $1.3 trillion.
2012 budget deficit projection in Obama’s numbers today: $1.33 trillion.
In the video above, Obama says, “In 2008 alone, we paid $258 billion in interest on debt, one in every ten taxpayer dollars. That is more than three times what we spent on education.”
I’m not quite sure where Obama is getting the $258 billion figure, since Treasury lists significantly larger figures for interest on the debt for each year. But for what it’s worth, the recent payments for each year:
Fiscal 2007: $429 billion.
Fiscal 2008: $451 billion.
Fiscal 2009: $383 billion.
Fiscal 2010: $413 billion.
Fiscal 2011: $454 billion.
We’re up to $169.2 billion in the first four months of this fiscal year. Again, we’re paying more in interest in the debt in the first four months of the year than the sum of the total deficit in 2007.