Experts Now Foresee Drop In the Deficit: Declines in Rates, Spending Are Cited
Spending this fiscal year is running so much lower than expected .for medical care, deposit insurance losses, interest on the debt and some other programs that budget experts said the 1993 deficit is apt to be $35 billion or so less than the Clinton administration estimated only a few weeks ago.</br></br>A number of Wall Street budget: watchers now expect that the deficit, for all of 1993 will be around $280r billion, about $10 billion lower than 1992's $290 billion and well below the $316 billion administration estimate.</br></br>drops off unexpectedly, the Wall Street projections could be correct. ÛÏRight now, if I were a betting person, I would bet on a deficit lower than last year's level." Blum said.</br></br>rates that has homeowners scurrying to refinance their mortgages is responsible directly or indirectly for a large part of the brighter outlook on the deficit. The fall in interest rates has meant that the governments interest bill over the past six months actually has been slightly less than it was a year earlier.</br></br>Office of Management and Budget to calculate the savings if rates on 10-year Treasury notes were 0.8 percentage points lower each year than was assumed in the budget, while other rates were assumed to move down in line with the 10-year notes.