May 2006 Deficit Watch

If current trends in federal spending and tax receipts continue, the unified budget would move into balance on Feb. 3, 2009.  That’s a ten-month slippage from last month’s trends; what a difference a month makes. 

I am mildly disappointed—not that the budget would take longer to balance (...that doesn’t bother me a bit), but that "VG Day" would happen after election day 2008—thereby removing much of the entertainment value from the upcoming presidential campaign.  [Too bad for me; I just bought a new TV so that I’d have a higher-res view of the looks on politicians’ faces during campaign 2008, as the budget moved into balance due to a growing economy instead of tax rate hikes.  Chin up, however; it’s still early.  We have plenty of time for the trends to get better again.  What the heck, I think I’ll remain optimistic and get some TV-screen-capture software anyway, just in case.  Then I’ll be ready to snap some of the better grimaces for subsequent publication my blog.] 

Here’s the latest “Deficit Watch” chart.  Please note that the dotted red and blue lines are not perfectly straight, but almost-straight, as explained later.  Click to enlarge.

And for anyone interested in checking the calculations, the table below shows the numbers I used.  [Method: Find the fractional number of years required for convergence at the respective growth rates, then convert that to the number of days until convergence.  The growth rates result in exponential growth, which causes the lines to curve slightly upward even though they look straight on the chart.]