[A] triple whammy of extra costs, including auto-sector bailouts, rising Employment Insurance claims and a drop-off in tax revenue.
Hmmm, a drop-off in tax revenue...drop off in tax revenue. Oh that's right, against the sound advice of numerous economists and the Liberals, the Conservatives felt it would be a wise idea to drop the GST by 2%. In their unceasing quest to do optical politics that look nice but actually cause great harm, the Tories cut Ottawa's revenue stream by billions of dollars so that a double-double at Tim Horton's would cost 3 pennies less. A few months ago, when it was projected that the Conservatives would only lead us into $80B of red ink over 5 years, it was calculated that their ill-advised tax cut actually took away pretty close to that exact amount. Obviously things have changed--for the worse--in the past few months, but all of a sudden those extra pennies look mighty useful come budget time don't they?
***Update***
And it looks as though people are getting the idea in their heads that the Tories' credibility deficit is the only thing that exceeds the fiscal deficit:
2 comments:
It was actually supposed to be a 34 billion deficit, so you might want to amend the title ;) No sense understating, and Flaherty said more than 50 billion, so a 20 billion dollar error is closer to reality.
See, it's too hard to keep track. The morning of the day before this post they were saying *only* $40B, which by the end of the day actually became $50B. Who knows, by June 1, it could be $55B and the keys to the Prime Minister's limo.
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