From The Arkansas News, 12/5/03:
http://www.arkansasnews.com/archive/2003/12/05/JackMoseley/75293.html
The national debt and other staggering concerns
By Jack Moseley
I'd like to talk to you about that $23,467 you owe.
In addition to the compounded interest on that debt, of course, you
can expect the total amount due from you, your spouse and each of your
offspring to more than triple in the next 10 years.
No, I'm not talking about your credit card debt.
I'm referring to your share of the national debt that our federal
government has borrowed to pay for everything from searches for bugs
that once were thought to be extinct to health and hospital services
for the people of Iraq.
I mean the 6 trillion, 862 billion, 804 million, 928 thousand, 244
dollars and 39 cents we owed the last time I checked.
As a single number, that's a staggering $6,862,804,928,244.29, but
that's just for starters.
With those wonderful tax cuts from President Bush and Congress, just
about any Republican, Democratic or independent expert on our
collective national debt agrees that here's what you can expect to
happen in the next decade if George W, Bush is re-elected:
This country will spend 25 percent more money than it collects every
year for the next 10 years.
A huge share of that will be in payments on our government's borrowed
money.
So on the national debt we already owe, the collective debt of every
living American will increase by 250 percent, not counting the
additional expense of compounded interest on the total debt each year.
In other words, that $400 check some of us got from Uncle Sam, along
with a reduction in out tax rates, will end up costing each of us
something in excess of $65,000.
Is this a wonderful country or what?
(Heck, this may happen even if Bush is defeated. It's hard to stop an
avalanche.)
This is just the one of things I've found to worry about recently.
For example, if we're going to spend so much money, why don't we spend
more of it at home and on things that will put our millions of
unemployed men and women back to work?
That would make sense to me.
But no, instead of authorizing a full five-year, $375 billion
transportation program to build needed roads like I-49 through western
Arkansas, Congress came up with a lame five-month extension of the
underfunded, existing transportation law when it could have created
90,000 short-term jobs and 1.3 million long-term jobs.
It's very doubtful much will change next spring when the five-month
extension legislation expires.
Members of Congress likely will be too busy protecting their own jobs
in a contentious presidential election year.
Another thing that bothers me these days - and I'm sick of hearing it
- is that rebuilding Iraq is just like the rebuilding of Europe after
World War II.
That's pure manure any way you look at it.
Iraq is not Europe, and George W. Bush is not Harry S. Truman.
Truman was a dedicated foe of war profiteering.
Today, American corporations that contributed more than $500,000 to
Bush's election campaign in 2000 have been rewarded - oops, I mean
awarded - more than $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq with our
money.
There were no bids for these projects, of course.
_____________________________________________________
Thank you George W. Bush.
Harry
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