Misrepresentation of the budget deficit as being the true measure of national debt

[Realitycheck]

The bailout essentially increased the Federal budget, already half a trillion dollars in the red, by 50%.

 

I wonder, really wonder, just how long it's going to be before people start reporting/reading this properly. For so long, people have watched this arbitrary figure of the deficit floating between 1 to 500 billion dollars, conveniently hiding the massive expenditures that get added to the national debt and true measure of the extra 10 trillion dollars that make it up. Any auditor would proclaim this as misrepresentation, because only the truly informed know what is really going on. I think that this is a big secret that is really going too far. What is your perspective on this issue? Do you see the media as not being completely forthright about this issue?

Edited October 20, 2008 by agentchange

[Pangloss]

Yeah the words "debt" and "deficit" seem to have become interchangeable amongst some in the media, along with various other accounting misunderstandings. And as you say, the problem of additional expenditures not being counted in the budget has been pretty serious as well, and that's coming from people who really should know better -- the lawmakers themselves.

[Realitycheck]

If 75% of the population knew that the only reason so many things get done was because we kept borrowing 500 billion dollars at a time under the table, you can bet that they would not be voting for such measures.