Is Our 'Booming' Economy Helping Our Budget Deficit?

In a recent The Hill article “Improving Economy Does Little to Help Obama Shrink the Budget Deficit” reported that in a recent jobs report the positive outlook that the report gave would help president Obama in his reelection campaign.  However, the growth was very little and it may not be enough to make a difference.

In the article they quoted Keith Hennessey, an economist highly regarded by conservatives, and wrote on his blog that “even if the current positive trend were to accelerate I would anticipate economic policy to be a (the?) central focus of the election.”

“If the economy looks good, debate will shift to the fiscal picture which is still miserable,” he wrote.

The report stated that “the economy added 227,000 jobs in February and the unemployment rate stayed at 8.3 percent.  However, the trade deficit grew and this led some forecasters to reduce their outlook for gross domestic product.”  So the growing economy is not helping the president and our government with shrink our budget deficit, which in turn means that our debt is not being scaled back. 

This is not good outlook for the future years to come, as we have a growing economy but no signs of relieving our debt and budget deficit means our government will still be in a hole where they owe others money for years to come and that is a terrible prospect for our future generations.  I believe that we in this generation should clean up the mess that our government has currently left us in and try to restructure not only our budget but the people in government who support the measures to keep us in debt.

Though the report says that:

The White House last month forecast 2.7 percent growth in 2012. Even with that high rate of growth, it estimated this year’s budget deficit to be $1.3 trillion. Even by assuming historically high growth of 4.1 percent in the middle of the decade, by Obama’s own figures his budget has $8.6 trillion in deficits over the next ten years.

The President may forecast growth in our economy, but that means nothing if our government is in a budget deficit.  That means that our government is still in the negative where we owe more than we can produce, and that is not an efficient way to run government.  I believe that needs to change, and a way to do that is to change the system and our current leaders in power and in government.  So I say we need ‘change’ to come again.