Updated: October 15, 2014, 11:17 AM EDT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The government says the deficit for the just completed 2014 budget year was $483 billion, the lowest of President Barack Obama’s six years in office.
Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew says it’s an indication the economy is far healthier than when Obama became president in January 2009.
The deficit is at its lowest since 2008. When the deficit is measured against the size of the economy, it’s below the average deficits of the past 40 years.
The deficit equaled 2.8 percent of gross domestic product. The GDP is the economy’s total output of goods and services.
Obama inherited an economy in recession. The deficit topped $1 trillion for each of his first four years in office.
Slow growth in government spending and increased tax revenues help explain the rosier deficit outlook.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
LOL That’s an article?
I guess it is simple and to the point. Nice if we can see this repeated by Dems over and over throughout the day.
Cuz you know if this happened under a Repub watch, there would be ticker tape parades out in front of the White House, all day, every day.
And Chuck Todd would be right there, breathlessly reporting about it.
Yeah, apparently they couldn’t even be bothered to provide some comparison deficits under previous presidents to provide some context, which given the current state of the media in this country makes me think that Obama would have come out looking to good in any such comparison and so such comparisons must be avoided at all cost.
“The deficit is at its lowest since 2008. When the deficit is measured against the size of the economy, it’s below the average deficits of the past 40 years.”
Guaranteed the republicans will find a way to complain about this.
It’s Obama’s fault. He’s sucking the nation dry and…wait what? It’s down by more than half? Uh…BENGHAZI!!!
Nah, they’ll just deny that it’s true or ignore it outright. After all, as Dick Cheney so helpfully explained, “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter.”
When Reagan took office the deficit was 2.6% of GDP. It spiked to 5.7% by the end of his first time and then back down to 3.0% of GDP by the time he left office. When Obama took office the deficit was 9.8% of GDP and now it’s at a 2.8%. As we know Bush started with an actual surplus left over from Clinton, but by the time he left office the deficit (as percent of GDP) was the highest it had been since back when our country was paying for WWII. Of course WWII then led to surpluses through the late 40s and most of the 50s, largely because the stimulative effects of military Keynesian economics wasn’t squandered with tax cuts for the wealthy. Who could have possibly predicted that waging a massive war while also cutting taxes during the 00s would’ve had such a terrible impact on our deficits?
Faced with the these inconvenient facts about deficits, Republicans, like Cheney, will just argue that actually deficits don’t matter so shut up that’s why.