Clearly the big story of the day is the deliberate leakage of Obama budget plans. The highlights:
- Obama wants the 2013 deficit to be half the size of the 2009 deficit he inhereted.
- The 2010 deficit is going to be large.
- Specifically, we’ll go from $1.2 trillion in 2009 to $1.5 trillion in 2010 to $533 billion in 2013.
- Spending cuts are expected to come from the expiration of stimulus money, from a reduction in “emergency” appropriations for Iraq and Afghanistan, from reductions in Medicare Advantage giveaways to private insurance firms, and I believe from some other form of medical efficiencies.
- Revenue enhancements are projected to come from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts, from ending the hedge fund manager’s loophole, and from carbon auction permits.
- Overall, the idea is to get back down to a deficit of about 3 percent of GDP, but to have a better health care system when we do it.
I assume more and more info on this will become available in the next few days.
Previous in TP Yglesias
By clicking and submitting a comment I acknowledge the ThinkProgress Privacy Policy and agree to the ThinkProgress Terms of Use. I understand that my comments are also being governed by Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policies as applicable, which can be found here.