Obama's Proposed Fiscal 2013 Budget Has $901B Deficit

The fiscal 2013 budget President Barack Obama will present to Congress on Monday will include hundreds of billions in infrastructure spending and a projected deficit of $901 billion, or about 5.5 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.

The proposal also forecasts a fiscal 2012 deficit of $1.33 trillion, up from the $1.296 trillion deficit in 2011 and also slightly higher than a roughly $1.15 trillion projection released by the Congressional Budget Office last week, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Fiscal 2013 begins Oct. 1 of this year.

Word of Obama's proposal comes the same day the Treasury Department reported the monthly U.S. budget deficit narrowed to $27.4 billion in January from $49.8 billion in the same month a year earlier, partly because some benefit payments normally made in January were shifted to December.

Treasury said about $16 billion of military active duty pay, veterans' benefits and Medicare payments were accelerated to Dec. 30 since Jan. 1 fell on a Sunday, which effectively reduced government outlays in January. During the first four months of fiscal 2012, which began Oct. 1, the cumulative deficit narrowed to $349.1 billion from $418.8 billion in the comparable first four months of fiscal 2011.

The administration's fiscal 2013 deficit of a 5.5 percent share of GDP exceed's Obama's September forecast for a deficit of $833 billion, or 5.1 percent of GDP.

The administration's expectation of a $1.33 trillion deficit for fiscal 2012 would amount to 8.5 percent of GDP.

The Administration forecast is used to develop the Budget, and at that time we predicted the unemployment rate would average 8.9 percent in 2012 and 8.6 percent in 2013. These forecasts were close to the consensus of private forecasters at the time, White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Alan Krueger said last week to the Wall Street Journal.

The proposed 2013 budget calls for $476 billion ininfrastructure spending and $350 billion to jump-start job creation, Reuters said. It also calls $2.2 billion in advanced manufacturing research and development -- a 19 percent hike over the fiscal 2012 level -- and a five percent hike in non-military research-and-development spending over the previous year's level.

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