The budget deficit has gone down in every year of Barack Obama's presidency -- and in no year of his presidency has the deficit been as large as it was in the last year of the Bush administration. This is true whether you view the deficit in terms of dollars (top chart), or view it as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).And that is not all. The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office is projecting that even if there are no more cuts in government spending, the deficit will continue to be reduced (both in dollars and as a percentage of GDP (bottom chart above) until 2015, when it will level off.
But if you listened to the Republicans, you would never know that. They are still trying to lie to the American people -- telling them that President Obama (and the Democrats) are spending too much and ballooning the budget deficit. And this is one bit of the massive GOP propaganda effort that seems to have been accepted by most Americans.
Note the chart below -- made from information in a recent Bloomberg News Poll (done between September 20th and 23rd of 1,000 nationwide adults, with a margin of error of 3.1 points). Only 10% (or 1 out of every 10 Americans) know that the budget deficit is going down. Meanwhile, a whopping 59% of the public believes the deficit is growing larger, and 26% think it is staying about the same (while 5% admit they don't know whether it's going up or down).
That's a shocking number of people who are not aware of the truth. And most of the blame should be laid at the feet of the mainstream media -- who are more interested in what the politicians say than what is actually happening in our economy (or with the budget deficit). And since the media will not report the truth, it is up to the Democrats to make sure the public gets the truth about our shrinking deficit.
Democrats need to beat this drum loud and often, especially as the next election grows nearer. They need to do this because the idea of a growing deficit scares a lot of people, making them more susceptible to Republican arguments to cut even more -- even though those cuts are not needed, and will damage the still struggling economy.
