The 2011 budget deficit for the federal government is $1.299 trillion according to numbers just released by the U.S. Treasury. That is the second highest deficit in history. In fact, Barack Obama now has the dubious distinction of the three highest deficits all happening on his watch.
The U.S budget deficit for fiscal year 2011 is $1.299 trillion, the second largest shortfall in history.
The nation only ran a larger deficit for the 2009 fiscal year, which included the dramatic collapse of financial markets and a huge bailout effort by the government. The nation's deficit that year was $1.412 trillion.This year's deficit is slightly higher than fiscal year 2010, when the nation ran a $1.293 trillion deficit. Fiscal years run through Sept. 30.
Obama will likely make it four in a row one year from now as his own budget shop is estimating a $1.1 trillion deficit for 2012.
The 2009 deficit still holds the record at $1.412 trillion. In 2010 the deficit reached $1.293. In just three years, more than $4 trillion of red ink has been added to the debt. The government's fiscal year ends September 30.
Prior to the Obama Administration, the largest nominal deficit ever recorded was $458 billion in 2008, the last year of the Bush Administration. That is barely one-third of each of the Obama Administration's dubious deficit records.
Barely a month into office back in 2009, the ever-confident Obama promised "to cut the deficit we inherited in half by the end of my first term in office."
That looks like yet another promise he won't be keeping.
"I refuse to leave our children with a debt they cannot repay," he said in remarks opening the one-day summit at the White House. "We cannot and will not sustain deficits like these without end. ... We cannot simply spend as we please."
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