Cap losses = income tax receipts go down

have the bill due in 2015.

This includes ACA taxes, increased marginal rates, capital gains, deduction exclusions. Estimated payments probably increased over the four quarters of 2014, as well, as people looked at their income and realized they either needed to pay est. taxes or needed to up the amount they were planning.

As pointed out, increased capital gains = increased tax payments. We hate the stock market, but we luvs us those taxes paid by the non-tax-paying rich.

Moreover, increased employment = increased tax payments.

Credit for deficit reduction also has to go to the infamous and much hated "sequester." Limit spending to less than the increase in revenue and the deficit goes does. It worked under Clinton, it worked under Obama, even though neither liked the idea. (This is, by the way, a functional definition of "austerity." Good to see it's not working, unless you do the fact-based comparison of reality versus somebody's projection. Note that for most of the last 6 years almost every projection that said "this is what will happen" has been seriously wrong when we've what eventually did happen. The only projections that haven't been falsified, with scant exceptions, are those that say, "If we'd done this instead, then this is what we'd have." In other words, if tested, they failed; if untested, they're deemed perfect. This, by the way, is a functional definition of the form of idiocy known as "blind faith" or "motivated thinking".)

So the deficit should come in a bit under $480 billion, either sustainable or unsustainable depending upon who's in office. It's expected to swell in the future.

The March 2015 CBO update also included a downward revision to the cost of the ACA because of lower insurance premium increases in 2013 and on lower enrollment in the ACA program then projected, reducing subsidy and Medicaid costs.

(Oh, crap. It's only Thursday and my cynicism meter is at Saturday levels.)