Unintended Deficit

Adding to Lynn’s post below, here’s Jake Tapper from ABC News:

The director of the Congressional Budget Office today updated his projections for the budget and economic outlook and is now anticipating a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, and $1.4 trillion in 2010…

The new projected deficit is four times the 2008 deficit, which was a record high for its time.

From the blog of Jake Elmendorf, director of the CBO, with more detail here:

For the next two years, CBO anticipates that economic output will average about 7 percent below its potential—the output that would be produced if the economy’s resources were fully employed. That shortfall is comparable with the one that occurred during the recession of 1981 and 1982 and will persist for significantly longer—making the current recession the most severe since World War II.

I’m not even sure what to say.  At this point the money we’re spending is putting us further in debt and extending the recession, with the earliest recovery at the end of this year.  A while back, I’d suggested that we’d have a minor run up in the market to the middle of the year, I think we’re at the top of our little hill.  I give it to early July before it starts to wind down again.

I think people had been starting to see, “the end.”  This isn’t going to be great news for people hoping for some good news.

Michelle Malkin has the scoop on where some of that stimulus money is going, by the way.  Glad we’re spending wisely.