President Barack Obama's $3.55-trillion budget plan will leave the United States with a worse budget deficit than Cuba, a leading Republican critic has warned.
"This creates for us a higher deficit than Cuba's. This is not the kind of position we want to put the United States in," Republican Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told reporters yesterday.
Other Republican critics of Obama's spending policies, including his nearly $800-billion economic stimulus package, have variously warned that he risks turning the country into Argentina, France, Germany, or Zimbabwe.
Asked for the figures underpinning the charge, a McConnell aide pointed to a report from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office that warned the US budget deficit for fiscal year 2009, ending September 30, would swell to 13.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
Cuba's deficit in 2008 was 4.1 per cent of GDP using the official exchange rate, or 1.57 per cent using another measure of total national output, according to the CIA.
According to official Cuban government figures, Cuba's projected deficit in 2009 will run to 5.6 per cent of GDP, less than the 6.7 per cent it reached in 2008.