Is Major Bowes working for the President?

The news this week in a Congressional Budget Office Analysis) that the deficit would reach $1.8 trillion was interesting enough (at 13% of GDP that is TWICE as large as any deficit since the end of WWII). The spread is what should concern us. The dip in the economy has dropped revenues to less than 16% of GDP. But expenditures will be more than 28%. For the last decade revenues have run at a rate of about 18-20% of GDP and our deficit has run a couple of points above that. The Obama people also believe that it would be good for the country, even after the economy recovers, to increase the federal share of our output to about 23% of GDP. One of the other worries about these kinds of projections, is based on prior CBO analyses the estimates contained in the book tend to be a bit more optimistic on revenues and tend to underestimate expenditures than the reality comes out to be.

If the numbers don't bother you then the picture of the cover should. Perhaps these people are not amateurs. If that is true the conclusions are even more scary.