WASHINGTON – The debt limit compromise may have resolved this year’s most clamorous political battle between President Barack Obama and Congress, but it takes only a modest swipe at the heart of the matter: the government’s relentlessly huge budget deficits.
The legislation, which Obama signed into law Tuesday shortly after Congress voted its approval, would save at least $2.1 trillion over the coming decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which tallies the price tags of bills for lawmakers. That’s real money, even by Washington standards.
But it’s just a slice of the nearly $7 trillion in red ink expected over the next 10 years — an amount that could grow by trillions more if tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush are extended beyond their scheduled expiration in 2013.
The debt limit package makes no sea changes that could set the budget on course for better days. It offers little prospect for stemming the growth of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — the huge benefit programs that analysts agree are the chief drivers of the government’s burgeoning budget mess.
“It nibbles at the edges of the problem,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist for the private firm IHS Global Insight. “The
Read More from the Article Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/politics/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110802/ap_on_an/us_debt_showdown_enduring_deficits_analysis
ไม่มีความคิดเห็น:
แสดงความคิดเห็น