Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
2/17/2011
Last night, Barack Obama continued to insist that his budget balances spending and outlays. In an interview in Cincinnati with ABC affiliate WCPO, Obama told interviewer Carol Williams that his budget will “solve the short term problem” of deficit spending, emphasis mine:
“The one that we can solve right now if we get together in a sensible kind of way is the amount of debt we’re working with on an annual basis, our annual deficits,” The president said. “My budget freezes spending for five years and what that does is solve the short term problem by saying we’re not going to spend anymore money than we’re taking in. That requires some painful cuts in certain areas, some cuts that I’d prefer not to have to do, but I think it’s important for us to get that right.”
At ABC headquarters, however, Jake Tapper and Sunlen Miller politely call this assertion “factually incorrect“:
That is factually incorrect. Even after the president’s proposed budget – with its optimistic prediction of 3.9% growth – achieves a point, in 2017, when spending is roughly equivalent to taxes coming into the government, the U.S. government will continue to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars a year to pay for interest on the national debt accrued until that point – including debt racked up during the Obama presidency.
Indeed, the U.S., according to Obama’s own budget projections, would borrow $627 billion in 2017 to pay the interest on past debt; $618 billion in 2018; $681 billion in 2019; $735 billion in 2020; and $774 billion in 2021.
Or: $3.435 trillion…
The article continues at HotAir.com
