Congressional Budget Office: 2011 Economic Forecast is Bleak

If you think Obama’s first year of taking aim at America’s economy and destruction of free market enterprise was bad, brace yourself.

In testimony before the House Budget Committee last week, which got scant news media attention, CBO Director Douglas W. Elmendorf painted a bleak forecast for the nation’s economy under the White House’s no-jobs, no-growth tax and spending policies. It spells even deeper political losses for the Democrats in Congress than are presently forecast.

Mr. Elmendorf, who was appointed by Democratic congressional leaders, told the committee that economic growth will be painfully slow over the next several years and that will keep the national unemployment rate at an average of 10 percent throughout fiscal 2011, which ends in September of that year.

Contrary to Mr. Obama’s Herbert Hoover mantra that economic recovery and more jobs are just around the corner, the CBO budget chief said the economy will grow by a weak 1.6 percent this fiscal year and the jobless rate will average 10.2 percent.

CBO’s outlook for 2011 is just as bleak. The nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) growth is expected to reach barely 1.8 percent, while unemployment is projected to show scant improvement, averaging 9.8 percent for that fiscal year.

The administration’s unprecedented budget deficits are expected to be more than $1 trillion this year and next and stay at very high levels for years to come.

Deficits like these mean the government’s massive debt burden will be at historically dangerous levels that will imperil our country’s future and our economy’s solvency, he said.

“It is true that as we push [public debt levels] in this country to 60 percent of GDP at the end of this year and beyond that over the next few years, we’re moving into [debt] territory that most developed countries stay out of.”

If we continue this profligate level of spending, “that raises the risk” of serious economic consequences for our country, he warned. Mr. Elmendorf isn’t the only one sounding the alarm over Obama administration policy.

“We are presently in a dangerously risky economic environment, more risky than any in memory, and that includes the 1970s,” Stanford economist John F. Cogan told me.
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2010/jan/29/troubling-democratic-tremors/

A risky environment created by a rank socialist amateur.  The coming economic collapse was brought to you by government bailouts, government takeovers of companies that should have liquidated, the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae debacle, and outrageous “stimulus” spending, all funded with billions in taxpayer dollars.

There are brain-dead Obamabots out there  still blaming it all on the Bush administration, and that we should give THE ONE a chance;  totally ignoring the fact that this new crisis rests entirely on the shoulders of Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Frank, and every other politician who went along with it.