Clinton Says Discipline, Growth Needed to Reduce Budget Deficit
Former U.S. President Bill Clinton said the Obama administration’s best hope to reduce the budget deficit is to focus on reviving the economy while maintaining discipline in budgeting.
“The most important thing is to have honest accounting and real discipline in the way you spend or cut taxes,” Clinton, 63, said in an interview today with Bloomberg Radio. “If you’re going to expend revenues or reduce them coming in, you have to replace them.”
Clinton endorsed Obama’s call for “pay-as-you-go” budget rules that would require that future spending increases or tax cuts be paid for with revenue increases. Still, he said progress on the budget deficit would mostly turn on the success of Obama’s economic strategy.
“The better the economy is, the quicker you’ll balance the budget,” Clinton said. “But anyone that says that they know how quickly they can do it with precision is not being entirely candid because part of it depends on factors beyond your control.”
The federal budget deficit will total $1.6 trillion this year as revenue falls and the government spends at the fastest pace in 57 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said last month guaranteed unsecured personal loan.
The gap will be equal to 11.2 percent of the economy, the biggest since World War II. The shortfall is largely attributable to the financial crisis, which has reduced tax revenue even as the government increased spending on stimulus programs and bailouts for financial companies and automakers, the CBO said.
Dollar Weakness
Investor concern about the deficit, which has grown from $455 billion in 2008, has contributed to the weakness of the dollar. The trade-weighted dollar index has fallen 12 percent since Obama’s inauguration in January. The index measures the currency’s performance against the euro, yen, pound, Canadian dollar, Swiss franc and Swedish krona.
Under Clinton, the budget balance swung to a surplus of $236 billion in 2000, his last full year in office, from a deficit of $290 billion deficit in 1992 during the final year of the George H.W. Bush presidency. The dollar index rose 21 percent in the Clinton years.