Where is the US economy headed?

Willard isn't for the middle class; he wanted the auto industry to disappear from our landscape. That could have resulted in millions of job loss, because without the workers earning income at the auto industry, other businesses would also be impacted; consumer spending would have dropped. This is elementary Economics 101; and he's no "business man" with good insights into national employment.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The budget deficit shrank by nearly half in January compared to a year earlier as tax collections from individuals rose and outlays fell, the Congressional Budget Office said on Tuesday.

The CBO said it expects the Treasury Department to report a $27 billion deficit for January, versus a $50 billion deficit in January 2011.

The January budget gap will bring the total deficit for the first four months of fiscal 2012 to $349 billion, a decrease of about $70 billion from the same period of fiscal 2011.

The CBO last week predicted that the United States would rack up a $1-trillion-plus deficit for a fourth straight year, forecasting a $1.08 trillion gap for fiscal 2012, which ends on September 30. The fiscal 2011 U.S. deficit was $1.3 trillion.

January U.S. receipts were up about $9 billion, or 4 percent from a year earlier, largely because of higher withholdings of individual income and payroll taxes, CBO said.

As a share of GDP, deficits drop markedly in the next few years but remain high—at 6.5 percent of GDP in 2011 and 4.1 percent in 2012, the first full fiscal year after certain tax provisions originally enacted in 2001, 2003, and 2009 are scheduled to expire.