🚀 go-pugleaf

Uncle Samuel wrote:

> Jon wrote:
> 
>>
>> Bush has no fiscal control.
> 
> Proof:

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/002483.html
September 08, 2004
Giving fiscal irresponsibility new meaning
Posted September 8, 2004 12:00 PM

Try as they might, there's just no convincing way to spin dismal results 
like these.

     This year's federal budget deficit will reach a record $422 
billion, and the government is now expected to accumulate $2.3 trillion 
in new debt over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office 
reported yesterday.

     The expected deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 
30, is $56 billion less than the CBO predicted in March, as a recovering 
economy added to tax receipts. But it is $46 billion more than last 
year's record shortfall, with even more red ink possible, the 
nonpartisan agency reported: The expected total 10-year deficit would 
climb from $2.3 trillion to $3.6 trillion if President Bush is able to 
extend the tax cuts he enacted. They are currently set to expire in 2011.

     "This is a fiscal situation in which we cannot rely on economic 
growth to cause deficits to disappear," warned CBO Director Douglas 
Holtz-Eakin, a former economist for the Bush White House. "The budgetary 
outlook will be dictated by policy choices."

In a comment that can only be described as an Orwellian masterpiece, the 
Bush campaign's policy director said, "The $56 billion decrease in the 
deficit projection today is a sign of the economic growth that is a 
result of President Bush's leadership on tax relief."

You see, when Bush runs the largest deficit in the history of the world, 
which has grown dramatically every year of his presidency, we should be 
thankful for his "leadership." When Clinton runs the largest surplus in 
history, we should thank Reagan. This is GOP Econ 101.

But the story of this year's deficit is even worse than the media 
reports are letting on.

When one excludes the fact that Bush is raiding Social Security to 
obscure his budget picture, the deficit is actually $571 billion.

That's just for starters. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities 
noticed a few other trends worth noting.

* If the economy is growing, the deficit should be falling. It's not.

     At this point in previous economic recoveries, deficits have almost 
invariably begun to shrink rather than continued to rise. The current 
economic recovery, however, is different; it has featured the largest 
deterioration in the government�s fiscal position of any recovery since 
World War II. A substantial �structural� deficit has developed that will 
persist as the economy grows, unless policies change.

* We're looking at a long-term disaster.

     Realistic assumptions indicate deficits will total $4.4 trillion 
over the next decade: Although CBO�s official projections show deficits 
declining over the next ten years to $65 billion by 2014, CBO notes that 
its official projections do not reflect the costs of extending the tax 
cuts beyond their scheduled expiration dates. As CBO director Douglas 
Holtz-Eakin testified in July, �...baseline revenue projections are made 
less reliable by the existence of expirations that few people expect to 
occur as written in current law.�[2] In addition, while CBO�s 
projections overstate likely future costs of military operations and 
reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, they otherwise include defense 
levels below those CBO estimates to be needed to fully fund the 
Administration�s multi-year defense plan.

     CBO's new report and other CBO documents include additional 
estimates indicating that if the tax cuts are continued and projected 
defense expenditures are adjusted to make them more realistic (including 
both a downward adjustment to reflect an assumption that operations in 
Iraq and Afghanistan will phase down over the next few years and an 
upward adjustment to reflect the full cost of the Administration�s 
multi-year defense plan), projected deficits will not fall below $340 
billion in any year, will average more than $440 billion per year over 
the next decade, and will total approximately $4.4 trillion over the 
ten-year period.

* And it's the tax cuts' fault.

     Calculations based on CBO and Joint Tax Committee data show that of 
the $8.7 trillion deterioration over the 2002-2011 period, $5.5 trillion 
is attributable to tax cuts, defense funding increases, and domestic 
program increases enacted by Congress. (The rest is due to economic or 
technical factors.) Tax cuts account for the majority of the $5.5 
trillion deterioration that is due to the actions of policymakers. In 
other words, the tax cuts have increased the deficit more than all 
program increases combined.

Finally, as I am wont to do, I thought it'd be fun to remind readers of 
some of the ways in which Bush has described deficits in the past:

* Bush on August 23, 1997:

     "All Republicans believe in a fiscally sound government. American 
families balance their budgets and pay their bills, and the federal 
government must do so as well. Living within our means, means better 
living for the families of America. Interest payments on our national 
debt are now our nation's largest expenditure. What a waste of 
taxpayers' hard-earned dollars."

* Bush on Feb. 3, 1997:

     Bush voted for a Republican Governor's Association resolution 
supporting a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution as a 
step "toward improving the economic prospects of all Americans, 
especially middle-income families and the disadvantaged."

* Bush on February 27, 2001:

     "Unrestrained government spending is a dangerous road to deficits, 
so we must take a different path."

* Bush on January 29, 2002:

     "[O]ur budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term."

* Bush on Feb. 3, 2003:

     "My administration firmly believes in controlling the deficit and 
reducing it."

Promises made, promises broken. Either Bush didn't believe these words 
when he said them, in which case he's breathtakingly dishonest, or he's 
committed perhaps the grandest flip-flop in political history. I'll let 
the Bush campaign tell us which one of these is true.