John Spratt: “in less than 10 days we will close the books on fiscal year 2004, and what a year it has been. A few days after that we…”

“in less than 10 days we will close the books on fiscal year 2004, and what a year it has been. A few days after that we will declare a deficit of $422 billion. You got it, $422 billion. Now, there will be all sorts of spin to make that shortfall seem a lot less serious than it really is. But here are the hard facts. At $422 billion, this year's gift will set an all-time record, $47 billion more than last year, which itself last year was the worst deficit on record. And at $422 billion this deficit is bad enough; but if you back out the surplus in Social Security, as you should, 15 years ago we adopted a law and said Social Security shall not be included in the regular budget of the United States. It is, after all, a trust fund. The money is incumbent for the beneficiaries. So if you back out those trust funds and the surplus they incur this year, the deficit in the regular budget of the United States is $574 billion for fiscal year 2004, $574 billion, more than a half trillion dollars in debt. Now, the President keeps telling us that this economy is on the mend. Usually when the economy gets better, the bottom line of the budget gets better, but not now. This year's deficit, you see, is not going away. It is not even going down by much. Even if the economy improves, it will still be about where it is, 4 to $500 billion for the next 10 years.”