Acknowledging deficit reality

For the first half of this year, the Obama administration had been sticking to their original optimistic deficit projections. Now, late on a Friday, they've released their new 10-year deficit projections.

The Obama administration will raise its 10-year budget deficit projection to approximately $9 trillion from $7.108 trillion in a report next week, a senior administration official told Reuters on Friday.

The higher deficit figure, based on updated economic data, brings the White House budget office into line with outside estimates and gives further fuel to President Barack Obama's opponents, who say his spending plans are too expensive in light of budget shortfalls.

The White House took heat for sticking with its $7.108 trillion forecast earlier this year after the Congressional Budget Office forecast that deficits between 2010 and 2019 would total $9.1 trillion.

"The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year," said the administration official, who is familiar with the budget mid-session review that is slated to be released next week.

"Our budget projections are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out."

And this isn't even including what Obama's desires for health care would do to the deficit. Oh, I forgot, having a federal takeover of our health insurance market is supposed to somehow save money and reduce the deficit. And we're supposed to ignore all those pessimistic CBO analyses as to what the proposals would do to the deficit because Obama's people know so much better. Sure.

Their rosy scenarios aren't convincing the Chinese who are cutting their holdings of American debt due to worries about possible inflation.

China reduced its holdings of US government debt by the largest margin in nearly nine years in June, according to data from the US Treasury.

China holds more US government debt than any other country and cut its holdings of US securities by more that 3% in June, said the BBC's Chris Hogg.

Link via Allahpundit who writes,

I wonder: How many economic projections has Team Barry utterly cocked up so far? Is anyone keeping a list? Off the top of my head, there’s this one, the infamous guesstimate that the stimulus would keep unemployment under eight percent, and the Cash for Clunkers funding that was supposed to last three months and ran out in a week. In these capable hands does the financial viability of universal health care rest. Exit question: Is this the stake in the heart of ObamaCare? One of the main reasons The One’s polling is deteriorating is public skittishness about deficits. Suddenly, in one fell swoop, the problem’s fully 30% worse than the White House thought, which all but destroys the credibility of their health-care projections going forward.

It just gives you a delicious feel of confidence in this team, doesn't it?