The Washington Post headlined a front page business section article "Blue Dogs Take Aim At Record Deficits." The article tells us how a group of conservative Democrats are unhappy with the budget deficit and hope to place new restrictions on spending. Let's hope that they are better at arithmetic than the Washington Post. Measured as a share of GDP, the 2007 deficit is projected at 1.3 percent. The 2008 deficit is projected to be just 0.7 percent of GDP. This is far below the post-war record of 6.0 percent of GDP reached in 1983. Even adding in the money borrowed from Social Security (which is appropriate for this purpose), the deficits for 2007 and 2008 would be just 2.7 percent of GDP and 2.1 percent of GDP for 2007 and 2008, respectively. These deficits are arguably too high, but they are not close to be records. Readers of the Post opinion pages are aware of the editors strong distaste for budget deficits, but serious newspapers do not make things up in the news section to support their editorial positions.
--Dean Baker
