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Power Demand From US Homes Expected To Fall For a Decade
We hear all the time that household energy consumption is rising, both in the U.S. and around the world. That's been true in the big picture for several decades at least, but reader captainkoloth, with his first accepted submission, points to an Associated Press article with some encouraging news on this front: the rate of growth in U.S. household energy use, and household energy use itself, is expected to decline slightly over the next 10 years. Take it for what you will, but that conclusion is drawn by the Electric Power Research Institute, "a nonprofit group funded by the utility industry."
Actually the budget debate was 'honest', in that it was explicitly about a decrease in yearly deficits. This can happen at the same time that absolute spending is increasing, because absolute revenue is also increasing through a combination of population growth, inflation, and economic growth (which is currently low, but still a positive percentage). Likewise the yearly deficit can be shrinking while the total national debt increases (since the deficit is still a deficit)... and even weirder, at the same time, the national debt as a percentage of GDP can be shrinking, since GDP growth rate can be higher than national debt growth rate.
And though the deficit projections were based on previously assumed budget increases, yes, you can indeed have an honest deficit reduction using those numbers - compare next year's absolute deficit with this year's absolute deficit. (Possible because, as noted above, we're comparing multiple inputs and outputs, all of which are changing). Indeed, this exact thing has already happened, since 2009 had a huge stimulus/bailout package, 2010 had a smaller one, 2011 had an even smaller one, and so on; the yearly absolute deficit peaked in 2009 and shrank each year since.
That said, there is an implicit lie in the budget bill, though not the one you claimed: it's that it's a ten year projection, and will therefore only happen in future congressional sessions maintain it. This is the same thing that happened to the Clinton budget surplus - it was real, the US did have an absolute yearly budget surplus for a few years... but the full claimed amount was a forward projection, and later congresses spent it. In the other direction, many "unfunded liability!" scare claims are similarly bullshit, since they're counting decades of upcoming expenses but not counting the upcoming payments towards them (and especially not counting that those payment levels could be changed). Since it's rare for any pay-as-you-go system to be "fully funded" anyway (100% of all future payouts already sitting in a bank account) - if I remember right, 70% funded is what's considered healthy - you can always technically scream about unfunded liability, and you wouldn't technically be lying (just intentionally misleading and intellectually dishonest).