…The Bush forecast of six months ago was deliberately highballed by $60 billion or so — precisely so that the administration could claim now that recent news on the deficit has been very good. As nonpartisan budget analyst Stan Collender wrote half a year ago, “The Bush administration held a conference call … to say that the 2006 deficit would be $400 billion or more … [This administration] has a well-established history of overstating the deficit early in the year and then taking credit when it turns out to be lower than projected, even if it has done nothing to make that happen.”
In July 2003 the fiscal year 2003 deficit was estimated at $459 billion; the actual outcome was $378 billion. In February 2004 the fiscal 2004 deficit was estimated at $521 billion — more than $100 billion higher than the Congressional Budget Office’s contemporaneous estimate, and $108 billion higher than the actual fiscal 2004 deficit of $413 billion. In January 2005 the administration’s forecast for the fiscal 2005 deficit was $427 billion. The deficit came in at $318 billion. In each case the Bush administration trumpeted the “progress” on the deficit made relative to the benchmark set by its own highballed previous forecasts.