The Pelosi-Obama Deficits - WSJ.com

The Pelosi-Obama Deficits - WSJ.com

Earlier this year when President Obama was selling his first budget blueprint, he promised to end years of "borrow and spend" budgeting. Yesterday, reality struck.

Mr. Obama's White House and the Congressional Budget Office told us that current U.S. fiscal policy is "borrow and spend" on a hyperlink. The good news is the deficit for 2009 will be "only" $1.58 trillion, about $250 billion lower than expected thanks to less need for TARP funds. But the Obama fiscal plan envisions $9 trillion in new borrowing over the next decade, which is $2 trillion more debt than the White House predicted earlier this year. The 2010 deficit also rises by about as much as the 2009 deficit falls from January, so even the TARP windfall gets spent.

We've never fretted over budget deficits, at least if they finance tax cuts to promote growth or spending to win a war. But these deficit estimates are driven entirely by more domestic spending and already assume huge new tax increases. CBO predicts that debt held by the public as a share of GDP, which was 40.8% in 2008, will rise to 67.8% in 2019—and then keep climbing after that. CBO says this is "unsustainable," but even this forecast may be o