In release timed perfectly so as not to interfere with the congressional vote last week, late on Friday the CBO put out its comparison of the Obama's budget, proposed back in February, with the CBO baseline assumption. The bottom line, and probably the main reason for the implicit S&P downgrade of the US, is that comparison the President's budget to the CBO baseline indicates that deficits are expected to rise by 41% over the next 10 years: the CBO project a deficit of $6.7 trillion while the President's number is $9.5 trillion, a 41% increase or $2.7 trillion. Got printing presses?

From the preface to the 53 page report which readers can peruse at their leisure or use as a paperweight:

At the request of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has prepared an analysis of the President’s budgetary proposals for fiscal year 2012, which were released on February 14, 2011. The analysis uses CBO’s economic assumptions and estimating techniques, rather than the Administration’s, to project how the proposals in the President’s budget would affect federal revenues and outlays and the U.S. economy. For tax provisions, the analysis incorporates estimates prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.



This analysis follows and supplements CBO’s “Preliminary Analysis of the President’s Budget for 2012,” which was released on March 18, 2011, as an attachment to a letter to the Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. CBO has not changed its estimates from the ones presented there. Chapter 1 of this report reiterates that document, with additional figures and details about the differences between CBO’s and the Administration’s budget estimates. Chapter 2 presents CBO’s analysis of how the President’s proposals would affect the overall economy (relative to what would occur under current law) and, in turn, indirectly affect the budget.

And the only chart that matters, courtesy of John Poehling: