WASHINGTON — The White House predicted on Monday that the Bush administration would bequeath a record deficit of $482 billion to the next president — a sobering turnabout in the nation’s fiscal condition from 2001 when President Bush took office and inherited three consecutive years of budget surpluses.
By most accounts, the worst seems yet to come. The deficit announced by Jim Nussle, the White House budget director, does not reflect the full cost of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the potential $50 billion cost of another economic stimulus package or the prospect of steeper losses in tax revenue or further declines in the housing market.
Mr. Nussle also predicted Monday that the deficit would more than double in the current 2008 fiscal year — to $389 billion, from $162 billion in 2007.
The deficit projected for 2009 would be the largest in absolute terms. The White House and many economists prefer to measure the deficit as a share of the economy. The White House said the 2009 deficit would be 3.3 percent of the economy. That is the largest share since 2004, but well below the percentages recorded in the mid-1980s and early 1990s.
The outlook for the budget will crimp the ability of the next president to carry out ambitious spending plans of any kind.
Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan fiscal policy group, said that a one-year record deficit would not necessarily be worrisome if not for the overall pessimistic economic atmosphere.
“I think that the fiscal year 2009 deficit could get a lot worse, if you add in war costs, there could well be a real drop-off in revenues from this year’s slowing economy and of course if there are further problems in the housing market, if the federal government does have to inject some money into Freddie and Fannie, that could get worse too,” Mr. Bixby said.
The new estimate of the 2009 deficit was $74 billion higher than Mr. Bush and Mr. Nussle had predicted in the president’s budget six months ago.
Mr. Nussle said the deterioration of the fiscal outlook resulted from “a softening of the economy.” And he attacked Democrats in Congress, saying they had allowed spending to grow out of control.
Representative John Spratt, Democrat of South Carolina and chairman of the House Budget Committee, said the deficit figures confirmed “the dismal legacy of the Bush administration.”
“Under its policies,” he said, “the largest surpluses in history have been converted into the largest deficits in history.”
The new White House report includes these highlights:
¶Total federal revenue would decline from 2007 to 2008.
¶In 2008 and in each of the next three years, corporate income tax collections would be lower than the amount collected in 2007.
¶Federal spending will shoot up nearly 8 percent this year and then another 6.5 percent in 2009. In 2009, federal spending would be equivalent to 21.1 percent of the economy, the largest share since 1993.
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