U.S. Budget and Economy

On February 1, the U.S. Budget for fiscal year 2011 was released. Regarding the deficit, a Reuters article from that day stated the following: The budget forecast a $1.56 trillion deficit in 2010, or 10.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), up from a 9.9 percent share of GDP in 2009. But the shortfall was forecast to shrink to 8.3 percent of GDP in 2011. By the time his term ends in January 2013, it would have halved from the level Obama inherited on taking office last year, keeping a key pledge. That supposes Obama gets Congress to agree to spending cuts and that the economy rebounds strongly enough to sharply lift tax revenues. The following graph shows selected measures of the deficit since 1970: The actual numbers and sources can be found at this link . As can be seen, the numbers in the Reuters article are for the "unified deficit", shown in purple in the graph. The unified deficit is usually very close to the change in the debt held by the public (labelled ...