Stealing From Your Children

A Common Sense Editorial

by Jesse Lee

OpEdNews.Com

[Common Sense is a biweekly newsletter distributed by online readers, especially in areas that have little quality media coverage and rely on news from right wing networks and newspaper chains]

 

Imagine a fellow in a flannel shirt approaches you, calling himself a “friend.”  He offers you a couple hundred dollars, telling you he knows that times are tough and that he just wants to lend a hand.  You might think he was fairly nice fellow.

 

But then another friend approaches.  He tells you that while that fellow was giving you a couple hundred bucks, he was giving every millionaire $90,000.  Worse yet, he didn’t have the money to give, so he stole it all from your children.

 

This is exactly what President Bush has done, and this year he will be touring the country, asking you to repay his “gift” by re-electing him for a second term.

 

Now Bush and his supporters might protest the term “stealing,” arguing that it is only borrowing.  “Borrowing” implies an intention to repay, but not only does the administration have no intention of repaying anything, if it has its way it will make permanent a budget that piles debt on future generations in perpetuity.

 

The analogy is imperfect for another reason.  A New York Times poll showed that 74% of Americans felt their taxes had either remained the same or gone up under Bush, and this 74% was exactly right.  Whatever “gifts” the president has given have been devoured by increases in state and local taxes, a direct result of Bush’s “starve the states” policy.

 

But even more stunning are the deficit analyses now being produced by independent organizations.  A growing consensus which includes at least four prominent independent financial groups (such as Goldman-Sachs) is finding that deficits over the next ten years will top $5 trillion.  If the Bush tax cuts are made permanent as the Republican leadership intends, such deficits would continue further than the eye can see.

 

To get an idea of the implications of this debt, take this simple fact:

 

The interest on the debt accrued over the next ten years under Bush’s proposed budget will amount to approximately $300 billion each year.  That is money that will produce absolutely nothing, flushed down the toilet of debt service.

 

What does $300 billion buy in today’s market?  These are the entire budgets for the following departments under Bush’s budget for 2004:

 

 

 

• 2004 Veterans' Affairs budget: $68.3 billion
• 2004 Homeland Security budget: $31.4 billion
• 2004 Social Security Administration budget: $53.7 billion
• 2004 Department of Education budget: $66.4 billion
• 2004 Department of Justice budget: $21.8 billion
• 2004 Housing and Urban Development budget: $34 billion
2004 State Department and International Assistance budget: $30.4 billion

Total: $306 billion

Rather difficult to argue that “deficits don’t matter,” isn’t it?

Put plainly, Bush’s budget is nonsensical.  Both governmental and non-governmental groups have raised alarms that the Bush budget is “unsustainable,” but the administration continues to brazenly ignore these warnings.  By the time our children become tax-payers, the government will be in a state of fiscal ruin, unable to provide Medicare or Social Security.  This is exactly what the hard-line economic right wants, and they may only need one more Republican term in the White House to pull it off.  This demands our attention during this election year.