The recesion has taken a larger bite out of the economy than the White House originally projected.

From ABC News’ Jake Tapper

Next week the Obama administration will revise its 10-year cumulative budget deficit projection to around $9.1 trillion, up from its earlier projection of $7.1 trillion, an official at the Office of Management & Budget told ABC News on Friday.

The $2 trillion revision, first reported by Reuters, stems from new data that showed the downturn was more severe than previously known, an administration official told Reuters.

“The new forecasts are based on new data that reflect how severe the economic downturn was in the late fall of last year and the winter of this year,” the official told Reuters, adding that the new projections “are now in line with the spring and summer projections that the Congressional Budget Office put out.”

Also next week, as has been previously reported, the administration will revise its annual budget deficit projection for this year down from $1.84 trillion to $1.58 trillion, since less money than once anticipated has been needed to stabilize the financial system.

Still, the rising debt has caused increased concerns among key foreign lenders like China, which in June reduced its holdings of US assets by around $25 billion.

The White House timed the release of the bad news perfectly.  Late on a Friday afternoon in August hoping that it would miss the evening news cycle and was also likely to be largely ignored on the weekend as well. The last thing the administration needs right now is more bad news on their economic numbers while they are trying to defend their costly health care reform plan and it looks like that they may get a pass on this one for now.

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