President Barack Obama's budget would produce $9.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade, an eye-popping figure that threatens his ambitious goals to overhaul health care and explore new energy sources, AP quoted congressional auditors as saying. The new Congressional Budget Office figures that emerged Friday offered a far more dire outlook for Obama's budget than the new administration predicted just last month _ a deficit $2.3 trillion worse. It's a prospect even the president's own budget director called unsustainable. In his White House run, Obama assailed the economic policies of his predecessor, President George W. Bush. But the dismal deficit figures, if they prove to be accurate, would amount to more than four times the deficits of Bush's presidency and raise the prospect that Obama and his Democratic allies controlling Congress would have to consider raising taxes after the recession ends. By the auditors' calculation, Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1 trillion a year of red ink over 2010-2019.
