- Ugly as the record $480 billion deficit for next year
looks, the truth is uglier. The estimate doesn't include the $1 billion-a-week
acknowledged cost of occupying Iraq or the expected billions to build power
and water systems, and the government must borrow $644 billion, not $480
billion, to get through the year. The difference is what it will take from
Social Security.
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- As late as 1983, total federal spending wasn't as much
as the amount Mr. Bush must borrow in the year that starts Oct. 1. Over
10 years, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that $1.4
trillion will be added to the national debt -- $3.8 trillion if the borrowing
from Social Security is counted. After 10 years, Congress will face a national
debt nearly equal to today's $11 trillion gross domestic product, and the
Baby Boomers will expect their Medicare and Social Security.
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- Wearing his "What, me worry?" face, the first
Republican apologist to react was House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle,
R-Iowa. "We've got to hold the line on spending," he said. NASA
needs money, according to those who investigated the shuttle explosion.
Airport baggage inspectors are being cut, and there isn't money to inspect
more than 2 percent of cargo containers coming into the country. That's
part of the line Rep. Nussle wants to hold.
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- For dotty optimism, though, see The Wall Street Journal
editorial page. That's where the chatterers of the right go for their talking
points. It says Mr. Bush's tax cuts pay off with phenomenal growth. Actual
growth in the last quarter was 3.1 percent. The CBO estimates 5.4 percent
annual growth for the next five years -- which would be phenomenal -- and
still shows deficits through 2011. Not even a rosy scenario can make Mr.
Bush's budgets look balanced.
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- OK, so the new CBO numbers may turn out no more accurate
over time than the $5.6 trillion surplus Mr. Bush blew through. But it's
easier to imagine events that would make the new numbers worse -- war in
Korea or Iran, worldwide financial crisis, tax cuts not ending on schedule
-- than events that would improve them -- invention of a new product with
as much economic impact as computers and the Internet had when they came
along.
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- As the CBO foresees 2008, the year Mr. Bush expects to
be his last in office, Congress will have $449 billon for non-defense spending
while it has to pay $510 billion in interest on the debt it's still running
up. The past will get more than the present. That's a prospect the party
in power created. Why go there?
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- Copyright © 2003, The Palm Beach Post. All rights
reserved.
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- http://www.palmbeachpost.com
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