Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I do not want to do any more statistical debunking this week, but this dog don't hunt:

The U.S. federal government deficit has shrunk by about a third so far in fiscal 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated late Wednesday.

Through the first eight months of the fiscal year (through May), the deficit probably
totaled about $152 billion, down from $227 billion at this time last year.

For all of 2007, the CBO still predicts a budget shortfall of between $150 billion and $200 billion. The deficit figures would be much larger if the expected $186 billion surplus from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were excluded.

Emphasis mine. The notion that the budget is representative of the U.S. government's costs and revenuesneeds to be debunked. The budget is officially what is on the books and has been budgeted for ahead of time - not the actual inflows and, more importantly, outflows. In particular, there is one noteworthy little item called the Iraq War that has not been on the books from the start, because it has been funded with emergency supplemental bills. The cost of the war so far is somewhere around $375-400 billion, $60 billion of which has been approved to be spent on Iraq this year. If you add that on to our deficit figure, we get right back to where we were last year.

Nothing like waging a war off the books so you can dupe your shareholders/constituents into thinking you ar much more financially viable than you actually are. That smacks of Enron-style accounting to me.