US Deficit Tops $1 Trillion for Fourth Year
By MARTIN CRUTSINGER
AP Economics Writer
WASHINGTON
The U.S. budget deficit has topped $1 trillion for a fourth straight year, but a modest improvement in economic growth helped narrow the gap by $207 billion compared with last year.
The Treasury Department said Friday the deficit for the 2012 budget year totaled $1.1 trillion. Tax revenue rose 6.4 percent from last year to more than $2.4 trillion, helping contain the deficit.
The government's revenue rose as more people got jobs and received income. Corporations also contributed more tax revenue than in 2011.
Government spending fell 1.7 percent to $3.5 trillion. The decline reflected, in part, less defense spending as U.S. military involvement in Iraq was winding down.
Barack Obama's presidency has now coincided with four straight $1 trillion-plus annual budget deficits _ the first in history and an issue in an election campaign that ends in Nov. 6.
Obama's Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, contends that Obama failed to achieve a pledge to halve the deficit he inherited by the end of his first term.
When Obama took office in January 2009, the Congressional Budget Office forecast that the deficit for that year would total $1.2 trillion. It ended up at a record $1.41 trillion.
The increase was due, in part, to higher government spending to fight the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s Tax cuts enacted under President George W. Bush and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan contributed to the deficits.
The budget gaps in 2010 and 2011 were slightly lower than the 2009 deficit as a gradually strengthening economy generated more tax revenue. But the deficits still exceeded $1 trillion.
Obama is campaigning for a second term with a pledge to cut deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade. He says he would do so by ending the Bush-era income tax cuts for higher-income Americans and by restraining the growth of spending.
Romney has said he would cut spending growth to help narrow the budget gap. He would cap spending at 20 percent of the economy by 2016. Spending in 2012 accounted for about 23 percent of the economy.
The government borrowed about 31 cents of every dollar it spent in 2012. The string of $1 trillion-plus deficits has driven the national debt above $16 trillion. The magnitude of that figure has intensified debate in Congress over spending and taxes but little movement toward compromise.
Many fear the budget deadlock will send the economy over a "fiscal cliff" next year, when tax increases and deep spending cuts will take effect unless a budget deal is reached.
Obama wants to eliminate the income tax cuts for families that make more than $250,000.
Republicans in Congress and Romney have resisted. They argue that with the economy still weak, the government should not be raising anyone's taxes.
Congress may address the budget crisis during a lame-duck session of Congress after the November elections.
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Libya Fallout Gives Rise to Obama-Clinton Feud
A nasty rift has opened up between President Barack Obama, former President Bill Clinton, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton over the fallout from the terrorist attacks on the U.S. consulate in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens. This feud may undermine and threaten Obama’s reelection chances.
Obama and Clinton both do not want to be held responsible
for the negligence before and the cover-up after the Libya attacks.
Clinton biographer Ed Klein on Friday reported that
Bill Clinton, sensing Obama’s political team wants to pin legal and
political blame on the State Department and Hillary Clinton, has been
working on doomsday and contingency scenarios “to avoid having Benghazi
become a stain on her political fortunes should she decide to run for
president in 2016.”
“If relations between Obama’s White House and Hillary’s
State Department rupture publicly over the growing Benghazi scandal,
that could damage the Democratic ticket and dim Obama’s chances for
re-election,” Klein writes.
According to Klein’s sources, Bill Clinton has assembled
an informal legal team in case there are cables or other evidence that
would legally implicate Hillary. Klein also told The Daily Caller that
Bill has even considered advising Hillary to resign if the Obama
administration tries to make her the “scapegoat.”
On Friday, there were signs the White House was preparing
to do to throw Hillary Clinton and the State Department under the bus.
White House press secretary Jay Carney, when asked if
Obama and Biden had "never been briefed" about the fact that more
security was needed in Libya, essentially blamed the
State Department, saying, “matters of security personnel are
appropriately discussed and decided upon at the State Department by
those responsible for it.”
Carney repeated a variation of this line throughout the press briefing.
Carney's comments came a day after Vice President Joe Biden not only contradicted State Department officials but himself threw the intelligence community under the bus when
he said the Obama administration did not know U.S. interests in Libya
needed more security before the attacks and that the intelligence
community changed its story after. READ MORE
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Cristóbal Colón: ¿Icono de Estados Unidos?
Un día como hoy, Cristóbal Colón descubrió América en 1492 y por eso, este día se celebra en el continente americano y España. Pero en realidad, para Estados Unidos el Día de Colón es un feriado algo raro. No se conmemora a un presidente o a un gran estadista americano. El gran navegante genovés descubrió América, pero no descubrió ni fundó Estados Unidos.
A medida que se acercaba el Día de Colón de este año, el presidente Obama trató de cambiar sutilmente el enfoque de la fiesta. En vez de celebrar simplemente a un audaz explorador, quería también centrar la atención en los “pueblos indígenas que habían habitado el hemisferio occidental durante milenios”. Su proclamación presidencial invitaba a los americanos a “reflexionar sobre la trágica carga que las comunidades tribales soportaron en los años que siguieron [a la llegada de Colón]…[y a] conmemorar las muchas contribuciones que estas han realizado a la experiencia americana y a que continuemos fortaleciendo los lazos que nos unen a día de hoy”.
Pero esto pasa por alto el significado de por qué Estados Unidos celebra el Día de Colón.
Leon Kass, Amy Kass y Diana Schuab proporcionan una rigurosa visión general de la historia y la tradición del Día de Colón en su plan de estudios What So Proudly We Hail (Lo que con tanto orgullo proclamamos). De hecho, Colón fue una figura importante para muchas comunidades de inmigrantes. Y más aún, Cristóbal Colón ha sido desde hace mucho tiempo un icono americano.
“La asociación entre Colón y Estados Unidos continuó prosperando a medida que los colonos revolucionarios buscaban distanciarse de Inglaterra”, observa el plan de estudios. “En Colón hallaron a un héroe que se había atrevido a cruzar un mar desconocido, dejando atrás el Viejo Continente para dar un nuevo comienzo en una tierra virgen, como estaban intentando hacer muchos de ellos”. Hacia finales del siglo XVIII, los americanos veían a Colón como “una mítica figura fundacional”. Y en el siglo XIX, era visto como “arquetipo del ideal americano: atrevido, aventurero, innovador”.
Nadie recoge esto mejor que Ronald Reagan. En una proclamación presidencial de 1988, Reagan conmemora a Colón por su espíritu: “Era un soñador, un hombre de gran visión y coraje, un hombre lleno de esperanza por el futuro y con la determinación de soltar amarras hacia lo desconocido y navegar por un mar inexplorado buscando la satisfacción de descubrir lo que allí hubiese. Mézclenlo todo y se podría decir que Colón fue el inventor del Sueño Americano”.
Lejos de ser un día para recordar nuestras divisiones o para hacer hincapié en nuestros errores pasados, el Día de Colón es un día para celebrar un Sueño Americano que valora la diversidad, sí, pero que también recompensa a los atrevidos y audaces. O como dijo Reagan, “no sólo [por ser] un intrépido explorador sino por los sueños y oportunidades que trajeron a tantos hasta aquí después de él”.
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