Quote:
Originally posted by sgtclub
Not based on what the director of OMB said yesterday. The statements regarding cutting the deficit in half over the next 4 (5?) years includes this amount, even though it is not a line item in the budget. And for those of you who are concerned with misleading, the fact that the up to $50B number is a contingent liability is highlighted in the budget. We can argue (or agree) as to the contents of the budget, but allegations of intentionally misleading are factually untrue.
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The story I posted yesterday quotes the budget as saying that it "does not include expected but undetermined additional costs arising from ongoing military operations in Iraq, extending beyond 2004." What did the Director of OMB say that would change this?
I'm sort of sad I brought the "actively misleading" thing into this, because as SAM notes this raises some particularly sharp hackles around here. My point that it takes a verrry creative accountant to both squint at the numbers and make a 40% decrease or whatever into "reduced by half" and then to fail to acknowledge that the deficit reduction projection is based on ignoring a contingent liability that is apparently estimated to be up to 10% of the deficit number.
To be clear here, sgt: I am not assailing the budget, I am annoyed with the SOTU comment that the admin had a plan to reduce the size of the deficit by half by '09. It has no such thing.
Much of the budget is based on revenue projections that may or may not have any relationship to the revenues the government actually receives. Are you telling me there's no way to make any prediction as to how much it might cost us to administer and reconstruct Iraq in a best case scenario, based on troop levels, expected pullout dates and reconstruction projects yet to be completed? I mean, they could set all of the assumptions in their favor if they wanted to (like they do in the tax revenue projections, for example), but there's got to be a number there.
If there's not, then he shouldn't have made any statement without highlighting that this big number is out there.
Having watched the contortions that private companies undergo in order to avoid making imprecise statements of their own performance, it is interesting to watch the admin head in a different direction. I guess 10b-5 is a "do as I say, not as I do" sort of thing.
