The magical thinking highlighted in two charts, as WaPo reports [5]; in his budget request, Obama projects public debt as a percentage of gross domestic project falling to 69% by 2024, while the CBO has it rising to 79% - a difference of 10 percentage points, or roughly $2.7 trillion. As WaPo notes, the likelihood of this scenario unfolding... zero.
[6]
The difference is due to hopeful expectations that aggressive revenue expectations come to fruition.
[7]
As WaPo notes, these revenue increases assume a compliant Congress that works with the White House to pass major new legislation in the coming years. And the likelihood of that particular scenario is almost zero.
One interesting "efficiency" gain, President Obama has proposed is the idea of either phasing out penny and nickel coins or using cheaper metals to produce them.
The fiscal 2015 budget, released on Tuesday, points out that the coins' manufacturing and circulation have not changed in decades and that the Treasury Department has been reviewing the coins' production. Obama has proposed similar reviews in the past but the measures stalled despite not being partisan points of contention.
The budget does not include a specific cost savings figure for the potential changes but it identifies the rise of electronic commerce as a reason to review the coins' makeup and distribution.
Obama's 2014 had pegged the cost of manufacturing a penny at two cents and the price of a nickel at 11 cents.
One wonders just how long it is before the Dollar bill is worthless too...