From: sawicky at epinet.org (Max Sawicky) Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2001 13:33:04 -0400
Current estimates by the Congressional Budget Office of the 10-year budget surplus, after netting out the tax cut, are $3.968 trillion. If you want to try and hoodwink the public and subtract Social Security Trust Fund surpluses, it's $1.484 trillion. If you want to try even harder and subtract Medicare surpluses, it's $1.087 trillion.
These are after allowing for the automatic growth in costs of entitlements due to inflation and increases in beneficiaries, as well as inflation-adjusting the rest of the budget.
Right now the Dems are attacking the Repugs for spending too much (in general, not military), and the Repugs are saying we want to use tax cuts to help the economy grow faster. Guess who is going to win that argument.
I've a forthcoming article in The Progressive Populist on all this. I'll post a link when it's up.
mbs