OMB director starts blog

Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, started a blog on the day the administration released its fiscal 2010 budget overview.

To view the blog, click here.

“So this blog may prove to be useful even if it simply provides a convenient way of keeping up with information from OMB that is already available in other formats,” Orszag said in his posting Feb. 26, adding, “I am committed to ensuring that OMB’s work is accessible.”

His first blog was a primer on the budget, the economy and the effect of a large fiscal deficit over the long term. Government spending in the economic stimulus law aims to boost demand for goods and services to spur growth in the short term, Orszag said. However, federal spending and reducing taxes also increase the budget deficit, which will leave less money available for future spending, he said.

Under policies that the Obama administration inherited, the nation faces fiscal deficits of almost $1 trillion a year on average over the coming decade, Orszag said. From 2010 to 2019, aggregate deficits would total nearly $9 trillion and average almost 5 percent of the economy, or gross domestic product, if past policies were continued, he said. Over longer periods of time, the deficit would reach even higher shares of GDP primarily because of rising health care costs.

“This budget puts us back on a road toward economic and fiscal health,” Orszag said.

“You probably won’t agree with everything in the budget. But at the very least, it’s honest, laying down a fair marker as to where we are now. And I sincerely believe that the first step in arriving at a plan to move forward is to reach agreement on the place from which we are starting. This budget is not an end point. It is a beginning,” he said.