From the Associated Press:
The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.
The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.
The last time the government’s revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression.
Ouch, no wonder the Obama Administration wanted to delay the release of the mid-summer budget update… This is a train wreck.
It’s no wonder the Obama Administration wanted to hide these numbers in July, with businesses struggling and tax revenues crashing their rosy deficit projections are about to meet economic reality head on… He’s going to have to drastically scale back his domestic policy agenda, there simply isn’t money to pay for things health care reform.
Now we know why they were in such a rush to push through health care reform.