Obama’s Deficit Plans May Use Over-Optimistic Growth Forecasts

From Bloomberg.com

The $3.55 trillion budget proposal for 2010 the president unveiled yesterday projects 3.2 percent economic growth next year, thanks to a $787 billion fiscal-stimulus measure he signed into law earlier this month that is aimed at creating jobs and consumer demand.

That is twice the 1.5 percent growth projected by the Congressional Budget Office before the stimulus bill was enacted and higher than the 2.1 percent consensus growth estimate by analysts in the Blue Chip Economic Indicators survey. Even those projections may be too optimistic: Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said this week the U.S. is suffering a “severe” contraction, and a government report today may show the economy shrank more than previously forecast in the fourth quarter.

“One glaring, central risk to the budget’s projections is the economic outlook,” said Joseph Minarik, a senior vice president at the Committee for Economic Development, a Washington-based public policy institution. The budget assumes “the economy is going to turn around more rapidly,” said Minarik, a former associate director at the Office of Management and Budget under President Bill Clinton.