Here in the real world, what goes up still comes down, which means
kids too young to protest today will pay dearly tomorrow for the
massive debts Bush is charging to their future.
When Bush took office, the CBO estimated Washington was on track to
eliminate the publicly held federal debt by 2008.
That meant federal interest payments on the debt, which were running
about $200 billion a year when Bush arrived, were expected to dwindle
to virtually nothing by the end of this decade.
Now, though, the latest estimates are that amid the economic slowdown
of the last two years, and all the new spending and the tax cuts Bush
has pursued, the federal debt will soar to at least $7 trillion by
decade's end.
That means future taxpayers will have to pay at least $350 billion a
year to service that debt, precisely as they are shouldering big bills
for homeland security, defense and retiring the baby boom.
To call this behavior a breakdown of fiscal responsibility misses its
true nature.
This is a stunning abandonment of generational responsibility.
Washington is behaving like a father who steals his kid's credit card
and goes on a bender.
From The Mercury News, 12/5/03:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/7420263.htm
The $500 billion bender
BUSH IS RACKING UP A CRUSHING DEBT FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS
By Ronald Brownstein
Seniors with big prescription drug bills, health maintenance
organizations awaiting lucrative new subsidies, upper middle-class
families anticipating a fat tax refund, and Iraqi cities expecting new
schools or hospitals all have reason to be thankful about President
Bush's extraordinary success at pushing his agenda through the
Republican-controlled Congress this year.
There may be less celebration among the young people who will inherit
the tab for these initiatives.
Bush is funding every penny of every one of these goodies by
increasing the national debt.
Which is another way of saying that he's sticking the bill to the next
generation.
The scale of the transfer is dizzying.
In just the last few months, Congress, at Bush's request,
has doled out $87 billion to rebuild and secure Iraq and Afghanistan;
approved a $401 billion defense appropriation bill, the largest ever;
completed a $1 trillion tax cut on top of the $1.35 trillion reduction
the president won in 2001; and
approved a Medicare prescription drug benefit that will cost at least
$400 billion over the next decade.
If the energy bill is revived next year, add to the list at least
another $26 billion in tax cuts for energy companies.
All of this, it's worth remembering, comes when the federal government
has already logged its largest deficit ever -- some $374 billion last
year, $84 billion more than the previous record held by Bush's father,
George H.W. Bush.
Several reliable analysts project the federal deficit will soar past
$500 billion this year -- and then remain near that unprecedented
level for the indefinite future, even if the economy recovers.
It's an understatement to conclude, as the Goldman Sachs investment
bank did in a recent report, that the budget process in Washington is
``out of control.''
Project this forward a few years and the fiscal strain on future
taxpayers could become excruciating.
By 2012, Bush's tax cuts will reduce federal revenue by almost $400
billion a year, according to calculations by Peter Orszag of the
Brookings Institution.
Even without the new prescription drug benefit, the swelling number of
seniors and the rising cost of care will push the annual bill for
Medicare past $500 billion by then, according to the Congressional
Budget Office.
The drug subsidy for seniors will add at least another $65 billion to
the tab.
The CBO says that by 2012, defense spending will approach $600 billion
annually -- a number other analysts say understates the price tag for
Bush's long-term national security plans.
Then comes the final indignity for tomorrow's taxpayers: huge interest
payments on the debt the government is accumulating to finance this
binge.
__________________________________________________________
In order to begin to pay for this Bush-created fiscal disaster, future
generations are gonna need jobs. See the dilemma?
Harry
.
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