MeMelYup wrote:Please explain how our deficet can be lower in 2011 that 2010 when the congress had to raise the debe ceiling?
It is easy if you do not confuse the deficit with the debt. The deficit is how much deeper in debt you go this year while the debt is the total of all of the deficits minus any payments made on it.
To give an example, imagine that the debt ceiling at the beginning of 2010 is 10 billion. There is a 1 billion dollar deficit for the year 2010. At the end of the year, the total deficit is now 9.9 billion. Along comes 2011 and the deficit is only 500 million. At the middle of the year, we approach the debt ceiling and raise it to 11 billion. At the end of 2011, we have a total debt of 10.4 billion.
Note that the total debt went up by 500 million but the deficit went down by the same amount.
Obviously, in my example is very simplified but it shows the principle of how the two are related and both claims can be true. If we were talking real government, the numbers would be in trillions and billions, not the millions I used.