When the government can't post a surplus in tax month, you know something is seriously wrong.
(Bloomberg) -- The U.S. reported the first budget deficit for April in 26 years, recording a shortfall in the month that usually sees a jump in individual tax payments before the Internal Revenue Service’s mid-month deadline.“When the government can’t post a surplus in April, you know things are dire,” said Richard Yamarone, director of economic research at Argus Research Corp. in New York. “It’s going to take a very long time until we see anything close to a balanced budget.”
The excess of spending over revenue climbed to $20.9 billion, compared with a surplus of $159.3 billion in the same month a year earlier, the Treasury said today in Washington. For the fiscal year to date, the shortfall totaled $802.3 billion, more than four times the year-to-date gap of $153.5 billion in April 2008.
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Corporate tax receipts totaled $70.8 billion for the year to date versus $171.1 billion, a decrease of 58.6 percent, Treasury said. Individual income tax collections were down 24.2 percent so far this fiscal year to $566.4 billion compared with $747.6 billion in the year-earlier period.
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The Treasury also said that for the fiscal year to date it has spent $184 billion on the financial rescue plan called the Troubled Asset Relief Program, and $130.7 billion to purchase mortgage debt from government-sponsored enterprises including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now in government conservatorship.
The most amazing numbers from this are the dramatic fall in tax receipts. How can stocks be up when profits, as evidenced by tax revenue, have collapsed.
The collapse in individual tax revenue is equally disturbing. It shows not just a collapse in employment, but a collapse in hours worked.
do we have projected vs. actual tax revenues?
I didn't see a reference and just did a hunt and couldn't find them.
Along with this news we now have SS going bust and Medicare bust in 8 years.
So, ya know we always have to dig due to those continual attacks on any social safety nets in the U.S.
To be fair SS and Medicare are different
Medicare is indeed f*cked. Between the fact that fewer taxes are collected for it, and costs are out of control due to the broken health care system, Medicare isn't going to make it. It would require a restructuring of the entire health care system.
SS is lumped in with Medicare in order to muddy it and make it sound like the same.
5 single payer protestors today arrested
All of the Nurses and Doctors who are grassroots activists on universal single payer health care are being completely locked out of negotiations, hearings, pretty much anything to the point they got themselves arrested today in protest.
It's just like the financial sector, bottom line they needed to shrink and this bloat for profit health care money machine has a lock on so many different things....
Let's just take something like a diabetes meter. They want something like $80 bucks for test paper. That is ridiculous, it's a trivial chemical bath...
So, things like blood work, the truth is many tests could be done automatically, at home, but the system keeps it as "certified labs" and requiring this bloat system so it costs $350 to get basic blood work labs done.
Just going to the doctor is ridiculous. They do not use email, databases, have a portable medical records and history....and just to do something as simple as a prescription refill so often is 3 phone calls....
I mean it's enough to pull your hair out.
I just heard from someone local that his insurance denied his emergency room visit....why? His wife was having a miscarriage. Insurance claims this is not an emergency and they should have gone to urgent care.
Frankly, I think we all need to get those Mexico IDs, say a little fake Spanish and show up to the emergency room with no real financial history and most assuredly no SS#...just so we can get some health care.
I'm sorry, this is beyond pathetic and as it's shaping up it appears we have yet another fox in the henhouse reform, just like the TARP.