The Biggest Bomb in Bush's Budget

[RedEarth]

Keep in mind this is from that liberal rag "Business Week"


It seems that no one outside the Bush Administration has anything good to say about the federal budget -- with good reason. The government's finances are a fiasco of mammoth proportions. Thanks to fiscal profligacy, more and more voices are heard arguing that America is rushing headlong into severe economic decline. In a National Interest article late last year, Niall Ferguson, history professor at New York University, and Laurence J. Kotlikoff, professor of economics at Boston University, drew ominous parallels between fiscal overstretch in imperial Bourbon France and contemporary America.

"In the same way, the decline and fall of America's undeclared empire will be due not to terrorists at our gates nor to the rogue regimes that sponsor them, but to a fiscal crisis of the welfare state," they wrote.

Let's review the numbers. The deficit will approach a record $500 billion in fiscal 2004, up from $375 billion last year. That gargantuan sum is also too low. The Administration's proposed budget doesn't include the costs for ongoing military operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) (see BW Online, 9/10/03, "The Neatest Thing about That $87 Billion"). And the White House has overestimated revenues and underestimated the deficit in each of its previous budget proposals.


http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=bw/nf200402137649db013

[ewagner]

1. Smoke and mirrors

for the election year.

Does Congress have the guts to stand up to these people?

Doubt it.

[UpInArms]

2. well, according to Greenspin

we just do away with Social Security -

that should convert that mandatory donation of 13% (employer/employee matching funds) directly into "tax revenues" for the general fund.

Just remember that those taxes (FICA) will not be refunded or ever counted as your donation to the continuing theft of everything that you put in "TRUST" -

therefore, it will be a massive breach of the TRUST in the "full faith and confidence" that can be given to the US government.

Can anyone say "CRISIS" here?

[RedEarth]

7. "just do away with Social Security "......this is what Paul Krugman

predicted months ago would happen......"starve the beast". Sounds like he might have been right.

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. Now multiple those numbers by 3

If you want to know the real number you have to apply fuzzy Bu$h math to come up with the real numbers. That is what Clinton found out when he took office, that the deficit was at least 3x's worse that what Bu$h Sr. had claimed.

[bahrbearian]

4. I didin't know the Dept of Defense was part of Welfare

"In the same way, the decline and fall of America's undeclared empire will be due not to terrorists at our gates nor to the rogue regimes that sponsor them, but to a fiscal crisis of the welfare state," they wrote.

[UpInArms]

5. what do you call those

Halliburton "no bid" contracts?

[stevedeshazer]

8. Call them

Corporate welfare on a massive scale that dwarfs what most folks think of as welfare.

[scarface2004]

6. welfare state???!!!

where s my friggin' check..my wife needs her fur and a cadillac dammit!!

[bemildred]

9. Left out "corporate"

as in "but to a fiscal crisis of the corporate welfare state"

[loudsue]

10. If they do away w/ Soc. Sec., there will be a revolution

of massive proportions in this country. Massive. If not Soc. Sec. recipients themselves, then their offspring who will then be required to take them in.

That, in itself, could "bring it on!"

:kick:

[Fovea]

11. Does anyone remember how Russia left WW1?

It is a lesson that bears remembering by these elitist pricks.