Obama Stimulus To Cost More than Expected

Nearly one year after Barack Obama put the ink down to sign his stimulus (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA) into law, the CBO has 'updated' its estimate on how much it will cost. The unsurprisingly more expensive new estimate will cost taxpayers another $75 billion.

When ARRA was being considered, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the staff of the Joint Committee on taxation (JCT) estimated that it would increase budget deficits by a total of $787 billion... it appears that ARRA will have larger effects in later years than originally estimated. All told, CBO now anticipates that the law will increase deficits by $862 billion.