Getting deficit facts

I spent time lobbying on the hill this week and want to check some of the facts representatives told me. For example, I was told the deficit is at $800 billion. The majority is owed to China and Japan. The amount owed to China went from $105 to $210 billion in 21 months.

Wading through those documents is enough to make my eyes spin like the old cartoons. How can I check the facts.

...No one has written anything about the deficit for several months now. Last week Greenspan hinted that the deficit is his over-riding concern. The following summarized Bush's budget for FY2005, but that was over four mnonths ago. This thing has probably spiriled out of control since then.

January 31, 2004
Bush defends deficit-laden 2005 budget


By James G. Lakely
THE WASHINGTON TIMES


President Bush defended his 2005 budget, which will be officially introduced Monday with a projected deficit of $520 billion, maintaining it is consistent with his plan to cut the deficit in half in five years as long as Congress "is willing to make tough choices."

"The budget we'll submit Monday does fulfill that promise that we'll reduce the deficit in half," Mr. Bush told reporters yesterday after a meeting with economic advisers. "Congress is now going to have to work with us to make sure that we set priorities that are fiscally wise with the taxpayers' money."

Conservatives are grumbling about Mr. Bush's $2.3 trillion budget, complaining that it continues a spending spree greater than that of even the past two Democratic presidents.
MORE>>

http://www.washtimes.com/national/20040131-120340-3868r.htm

This sounds a bit confused. The deficit and the debt are two different things. The deficit is the shortfall in a given year's budget (how much spending exceeds revenue.) This year's deficit is projected at a shade short of $500 billion. If I'm not mistaken, that doesn't include the Iraq supplements, so really it's higher.

I don't really see - though I'm no expert - how you could describe a given year's deficit as being owed to anyone in particular. I mean, I guess you could talk about who bought new bond issues, but it doesn't much matter whether the bonds the chinese hold are new ones or old ones, after all. And at any rate, over 21 months you'd already be talking about multiple deficits.

The debt is the accumulation of all the annual deficits (less the rare moments we pay a bit of it down.) The debt stands at about 7.1 trillion dollars, of which about three trillion is "intragovernmental" - largely the money borrowed from the social security and medicare trust funds - and normally counted separately; that leaves a public debt of $4.1 trillion, give or take a few billion.

Most of that debt is owned domestically, I think, but among foreign owners Japan, Britain and China do lead. As a security issue, foreign ownership of US debt probably isn't a huge deal right now, but it wouldn't take very many years at $500bn a year before it would be.

See the finance tables at http://www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/tables04.html for references.

What you say makes sense, but I cannot find the debt data. I cannot find the debt of $7.1 trillion dollars. That figure is larger than I was told. I want to know where the congressmen are getting the figures that they base their decisions on.

The question as to who owns the bonds is bothering some people in DC. They see this as much more disturbing. Subterfuge and depression pervades. How can they make decisions with bad data?

who are you talking to on Cap. hill?

Who owns the bonds? Subterfuge? Sounds like Enron-style government to me...

Spent all day talking to the majority of TN congressman. You get different data from every person.

if no one really knew what was going in with our deficit and debt.