The surplus — the first of Barack Obama’s presidency — was the result of both increased tax collection and lower government spending. Before April, the government had not run a surplus since September 2008, the month that the financial crisis struck the U.S. economy. Read CBO report.
The CBO’s estimate is released before the Treasury Department’s monthly budget report. That report is scheduled for later this week.
CBO estimated that receipts were $30 billion higher in April than the same month a year ago, due to declining refunds that month and higher corporate income tax receipts. Spending fell by $69 billion compared to April 2011, marked by lower outlays on defense, Medicaid and the Postal Service.
via U.S. to run first surplus since 2008: CBO – MarketWatch.
Don’t worry, Romney and the Republicans will find a way to make this seem like a negative soon enough.
And they won’t moderate their rhetoric in the slightest. Despite the fact that year over year spending is down (illustrating it is well under control), and the economy is growing after the stimulus (it was shrinking before), spending will still be “out of control” and the stimulus will still have “failed”.
And yes…unemployment keeps going down (which is spun as a bad thing).
Romney said the country should be adding 500,000 jobs a month and said any unemployment rate above 4 percent is “not cause for celebration.” The rate has not been that low seen since the last days of the Clinton administration. [and there have been four months in the history of country where that many jobs were created…one of them last year. -ed]
“We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up,” Romney said on Fox News Channel. “This is not progress.”
Obama, at a Virginia high school to promote a freeze on interest rates for student loans, focused on the six-month total of more than 1 million jobs created. But he said: “We’ve got to do more.”
The 8.1 percent unemployment rate is the lowest since January 2009, the month Obama was sworn in.
The funny thing, if you had no memory of anything that happened before January 2009, you could blame the last few years on Obama. But then you’d have to lie constantly about having no memory of that stuff.
Robot Pirate Ninja 