Stimulus package must stop government debt bubble

Maya Macguineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, spoke on a conference call regarding the U.S. Budget Watch stimulus policy guide that was released today. Before the financial crisis that began earlier this month, both presidential candidates had budget plans that would increase the deficit by over $200 billion a year. U.S. Budget Watch believes that Fiscal Year 2009 would see a $1 trillion budget deficit if either plan of the presidential candidates were enacted. Macguineas said that with the revised proposals, Senator John McCain’s stimulus plan would cost over $52 billion and Senator Barack Obama’s would cost $188 billion. However, Macguineas stated that “we will have a stimulus package to prop up the economy” and that it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The necessary steps must be taken to stabilize the economy but to keep a stimulus package as “free of political pork as possible.” Without a clean and temporary plan, she said, America may find itself in the middle of a “government debt bubble.”