Obama’s Accomplishments: U.S. Budget Deficit Hit Record $1.4 Trillion in 2009

Last year when the previous deficit record was $459 billion liberal pundits like Keith Olberman could hardly studder the words half trillion when Criticizing the President Bush; now one year later Obama has tripled that number but no one seems to care.

As usual, Obama has attributed the nation’s dismal fiscal situation to the financial and economic crises he inherited. White House Budget Director Peter Orzsag is overseeing the administration’s efforts to tackle the soaring deficit next year.

The White House says it wants deficits in the next few years to stabilize at or below 3 percent of GDP. But by the White House’s own estimates released in August — which predicted deficits averaging about 4 percent through the rest of the decade — it would take several hundreds of billions of dollars in new taxes or spending curbs to just get the deficit down to 3 percent of GDP.

Those steps would easily exceed the efforts under way now to pay for Obama’s health care plan. For example, bringing the 2014 deficit back in line with Obama’s goals would require about $240 billion in deficit-closing steps in that year alone — near the amount of revenue that would flow from the expiration of former President George W. Bush’s tax cuts.

Such steps would almost certainly force Obama to break his promise to limit tax increases to the wealthy.