Gambling Away America's Future

When George Bush took office in January, 2001, the US national debt was about $5.6 trillion. Now it stands at about $8.6 trillion. So much debt in so little time.

Wracking up that much new debt is quite an accomplishment. It was achieved, in no small part, by carrying the costs of the Iraq war "off the books" via special congressional appropriations. Like another "spend and debt" president before him, Ronald Reagan, Bush has spent money, much of it borrowed money, like it was water.

Now the Frat Boy is going back to the congressional well for more and he's after quite a bit more including a 3-year, three-quarter of a trillion dollar defence appropriation. Not to worry, he says, the deficit is going down faster than the Titanic.

In his classic style, Bush's budget projections rest on a bucketful of optimistic assumptions. An Associated Press analysis of the budget reveals that Bush is counting on a lot of luck:

"Luck that the economy keeps growing, that corporate profits remain robust, that inflation stays tame and that foreigners keep lending the U.S. money. Otherwise, the numbers don't add up.

"Bush's spending outline also assumes an exit strategy from Iraq that even the president's supporters see as wishful thinking - a sharp drop in war spending in time for the 2008 presidential election. It's a peace dividend without peace."

"There's a lot of surplus capital looking to be invested, and thus far those funds have been invested in U.S. treasuries, and therefore the world is financing our deficits,'' said Thomas Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-leaning think tank. ``That has helped keep inflation and interest rates low, and therefore the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been easier to tolerate.''

The costs of Shrub's War of Whim are creating budget pressures that will have to be made good out of social programmes, notably Medicare and Social Security benefits. Despite this, Bush is insistent on making permanent his tax cuts for the rich.

Eventually, some bright morning, somewhere down the line, the average American is going to wake up and realize their president has been waging a class war - against them.