Why Deficits Matter to American Families - The Pocketbook Impact of the Federal Deficit on the Middle-Class

SUMMARY

Conservatives say that deficits don’t matter, and they’ve spent the nation into a ditch to prove it. Under President Bush, the federal budget deficit is expected to reach an historic high of $1.1 trillion by 2011. We do the math to determine how this impacts the budget of average American families.

For middle class families, the deficit means two things:

1. Paying as much as $1,700 a year in unnecessary interest for consumer debt and home mortgages; and
2. One out of every twelve federal tax dollars spent by the federal government is wasted on making interest payments on the national debt.

Dick Cheney and other conservatives insist that “deficits don’t matter.” We lay out the real costs of deficits to average Americans.

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