The US Daily Cash Deficit for 3/19/2013 was $7.8B, bringing the monthly total to $61B, vs. year ago deficit of $50B
I think it is worth noting that tax deposits are up $16B over last year…an 11% improvement, which is in line with January…February only posted 4% growth. If I see this continuing past tax season and into May/June, we can probably say that yes, we have a bonafide 10% or so increase in tax revenues….for one year. The problem with the CBO report is that it forecasts that growth again for 2014 and then 12% for 2015. Taxes were raised once…so a jump from 2012 to 2013 was expected….but it creates a new baseline….Any revenue growth from 2013 to 2014 and beyond then needs to come from bonafide growth…all else equal. This isn’t completely unprecedented…5/2005 to 4/2007 was 24 months in a row of 10% yoy growth in FTD’s, but I think we all remember how that ended. Who knows what the future holds, but to me, this sure doesn’t feel like 2005.
[Update] Just for some reference…the number of people employed grew at 1.1% over the last 12 months. Assuming that stays relatively constant…the only way we get to 11% growth again next year is that we all pay another 10% on top of what we did this year….Go get ’em!!
I was reading this article at money.com about how the sequester is affecting civilian defense employees. Apparently 800,000 employees hours will be cut 20% over the next 5 months. The headline of course is 20% PAY CUT…which I suppose is technically true…but they do get an extra day off each week….so it’s not like they are doing the same amount of work for less pay(unless they already screw around 8 hours a week 🙂 ). I guess that’s a minor quibble if you have a $300 cell phone payment due next week. If my employer offered me a 32 hour work week…with benefits…I think I’d go for it, but that’s just me.
So, I busted out my calculator to get an idea what this does to the deficit math. I figure 800k employees, averaging $75k per year…so that’s $60B. *0.2/12….gets me to $1B per month savings….for the next 5 months. In a $300B+ monthly budget. Yawn… Isn’t math awesome?