BUDGET WOES
10 March 2003

Currently, figures on budget estimates for this year and next are wavering. Congressional estimates for the budget deficit for this year have just been raised by another $30 billion. The President's proposed tax cut plan admits to worsening the budget situation significantly, but exactly how much is still at issue.

Original estimates placed the budget deficit for 2004, after the tax cut, at just over $300 billion. Opposition senators then complained that this figure does not account for the administration's plan to tap into the Social Security trust fund. Adding those estimates, the deficit is then estimated to rise to near $570 billion. But even that figure, already far beyond record deficits, does not include the cost of a war in Iraq.

Figures for the cost of war are as wide-ranging as is possible to conceive, with low estimates (considered unrealistic) from the Pentagon at $10 billion, and the highest calculations from a prominent economist at $1 trillion and more (which includes extended occupation). Originally, inside estimates ranged between $100 billion and $200 billion, while the administration has since sought to tone down expectations, claiming that the true range is somewhere between $50 billion and $95 billion.

With crises in Social Security, healthcare, and wages, looming, with unemployment still on the rise, and with corporate fraud cases mounting, the budgetary question becomes even more insistent: can the world's most vibrant economy continue to sustain so many drains on its equlibrium? Tax cuts, a war, and the resolution of vital domestic issues like healthcare and education are all vying for funding, and the debate is only beginning, according to some.