You got the sense that a great deal was happening if you focused on the budget news from Washington last week. But looking at each event by itself provided a very different view than if you took a step back and looked at the whole picture
Federal borrowing will have increased by approximately 900 percent in the 25 years between 1981 and 2006. Net interest payments on the national debt will soon be about 10 percent of all federal spending. Gross interest payments will soon exceed the amount the Pentagon spends each year and be the single largest item in the budget.
The growing debt and interest payments do not seem to be of much concern for most policymakers in Washington. The desire to spend more in all categories of federal activities is at least as strong today as it has ever been.
The large interest payments that have been baked-in to the federal budget pie are a dagger pointed directly at all programs and federal taxes. Interest payments are the most mandatory of all federal spending. Unless the appetite for high deficits continues, everything else in the future will be in jeopardy and under extreme pressure because of how much the government has already borrowed and will continue to borrow.
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The deficit is not declining. The talk about cutting it in half by the end of 2009 is just that: talk. The only way the deficit will be cut in half by the end of this decade is if the definition of "half" is revised.
http://nationaljournal.com/collender.htm