The Politico today reports when interest costs are added to the $825 billion government spending plan proposed by President Barack Obaama, the total costs to taxpayers could top $1 trillion.
In a letter to Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), ranking member of the House Budget Committee, Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf reports the interest cost would be $347 billion over 10 years, meaning the $825 billion plan could cost as much as $1.172 trillion.
"Such costs are not included in CBO’s cost estimates for individual pieces of legislation and are not counted for Congressional scorekeeping purposes for such legislation. Under CBO’s current economic assumptions and assuming that none of the direct budgetary effects of H.R. 1 are offset by future legislation, CBO estimates that the government’s interest costs would increase by $0.7 billion in fiscal year 2009 and by a total of $347 billion over the 2009- 2019 period,” writes the head of Congress’ non-partisan research service.
Erroneously called a "stimulus package," the bill commits billions of dollars in new government spending that does not create significant numbers of jobs, but fund unrelated proposals favored by the Obama adminstration.
