Nussle reaching for coverage

It has been a while since Jim Nussle got some local media coverage, especially in the local newspapers.

Today, he took that step by getting a letter to the editor published by the Des Moines Register. He's basically taking credit for both the balanced budget in the 1990s and the new-found economic 'success' of the current year (I put success in quotes because I don't consider mediocrity success).

"On July 13, the Office of Management and Budget's mid-session review predicted the fiscal year 2005 deficit to be $94 billion less than projected last February. Similarly, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office's most recent monthly budget review reported a decrease in its own deficit estimates, saying it now expects the "2005 deficit will be significantly less than $350 billion, perhaps below $325 billion." Reductions in budget-deficit projections are real evidence of a growing economy.

Our real domestic product has increased for 14 consecutive quarters with the strongest growth in five years; 3.7 million new jobs were created over the past 25 months; and our unemployment rate fell from 6.3 percent (where it was two years ago) to 5 percent last month."

Oooh, wow, we're only going to have a $325 billion deficit. My, my, you've done an amazing job, Mr. House Budget Committee Chairman.

Only, that's not the case. The numbers easily could've been a lot lower (or higher, depending on your mathematic interpretation since a deficit is a negative number). Instead, you and your committee made sure that the Bush tax cuts would bring in short-term revenue boosts while over the long-run making sure that overall revenues declined as you quickly weaned the hyper rich off of their "humongous" tax burden.

Meanwhile, the economic growth we have had lately takes us back into the mediocre category compared to the boom that most Americans are used to thanks to the 1990s and Bill Clinton's administration. And when the housing bubble bursts, things will go bad again anyway.