[Mavdog]

The trade deficit seems to be on a positive trend, aided by the weaker dollar. There's much talk about the Chinese allowing the yuan to float (currently it's pegged to the dollar) and if that were to come to pass it would help shrink the trade deficit. The only concern that I can see in the trade deficit is that America isn't exporting much finished goods other than planes. the issues with the manufacturing sector are well known and it's anybody's guess if that negative trend will reverse itself.

Is the trade deficit an item that the WH can affect? probably not, unless they want to become protectionist, and I doubt that would happen. Some have opined that the decrease in the value of the dollar was encouraged by the administration to help the competitiveness of the american products (remember Snow's comments of '04). That's a very touchy issue as it affects our relations with other countries and their currencies.

As far as the tax receipts, note that the article mentioned an increase in corporate tax collections and also the mention that "Most of the increase in individual tax receipts appears to have come from higher stock market gains and the business income of relatively wealthy taxpayers", which is (as I mentioned above) LT gains being realized. Those are non-recurring income events.

The federal budget deficit is an issue going forward that will take a larger and larger amount to service the debt it creates. The temporary tax cut of the Bush plan, coupled with the rise in expenditures, is making that situation worse.

That is of course a seperate issue of how the temporary tax cuts were apportioned. My beef with the cuts is how they were apportioned as they benefitted the upper income taxpayers more than the middle or lower income taxpayers.