message implicit in the new budget President Bush presents this month is that, at least for the moment, red ink is OK. Spending more than $2.6 trillion while collecting $2.3 trillion in tax revenue adds to a sea of red ink that will persist for years to come, according to virtually all forecasts, because of tax cuts, growing health care costs and the imminent retirement of 78 million baby boomers.
How the problem is handled will be up to Congress and the president, and likely the next president, because a crisis could hit in the next five years, says Warren Rudman, a former Republican senator from New Hampshire and co-founder of the Concord Coalition, a deficit watchdog group. |