Since that time, the cumulative deficit has been erased.
So new budget projections show a cumulative deficit of $9 trillion over the next decade.
That is how a $6 trillion projected surplus turned into a cumulative deficit of $6 trillion.
The cumulative deficit was forecast at $5.3 trillion over the next decade.
By December, the cumulative deficit was still bigger than it had been in December 2003.
This left a cumulative deficit for the year so far of £67bn, almost three times last year's equivalent figure.
From 1980 to 2014 the cumulative deficit was $68 billion, which is less than a quarter of Irish GDP.
Among Washington's independent budget experts, the consensus is that the official figures understate the cumulative deficit by about $5 trillion.
That made for $28bn in cumulative "deficit "blowouts"– only slightly worse than the predicted $25bn blowout expected over this year and the next.
If it were held flat for the next three years, that $47 billion cumulative deficit would drop down to something more like $11 billion, all else being equal.
Fiach MacConghail, who took over as director this year after a string of job cuts, now faces a cumulative deficit of $4.1 million.
