{"id":414,"date":"2003-07-16T10:50:33","date_gmt":"2003-07-16T15:50:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/414.html"},"modified":"2003-07-16T10:50:33","modified_gmt":"2003-07-16T15:50:33","slug":"bush-administration-still-making-promises-about-reducing-the-deficit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-administration-still-making-promises-about-reducing-the-deficit\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush administration still making promises about reducing the deficit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The fact that the budget deficit has reached $455 billion appears to be generating quite a bit of attention in the national media, which is certainly a good thing. The public needs to realize that their government is running up quite a bill &#8212; and that all of us will be paying the costs for decades to come. Indeed, the administration, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/articles\/A61607-2003Jul15.html?nav=hptop_tb\">by its own admission<\/a>, plans to add about $2 trillion to the national debt over the next five years.<\/p>\n<p>I was surprised, therefore, to see that the White House pledged yesterday to <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/2003\/07\/15\/news\/economy\/bush_deficits.reut\/index.htm?cnn=yes\">cut the deficit in half<\/a> by 2006.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, administration officials gave no details as to how they were going to achieve this feat. Cutting the deficit from a half-trillion to a quarter-trillion in a couple of years isn&#8217;t particularly easy. It would require higher taxes, reduced spending, and strong economic growth, yet this administration has offered us lower taxes, increased spending, and anemic economic growth. Not exactly a recipe for success.<\/p>\n<p>Just as importantly, I don&#8217;t what makes the White House think they have any credibility left on this issue. Bush was dealt a near-perfect hand. When he was inaugurated, the U.S. was enjoying unprecedented fiscal success and the highest surpluses in American history. The <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2001\/02\/20010228.html\">president promised<\/a> to keep the budget balanced and &#8220;[pay] down an unprecedented amount of our national debt.&#8221; Instead, he ended up adding to the national debt more than any president ever.<\/p>\n<p>When the surplus vanished, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.whitehouse.gov\/news\/releases\/2002\/01\/20020129-11.html\">Bush said<\/a> his deficits &#8220;will be small and short-term.&#8221; This, too, was wrong.<\/p>\n<p>Now the White House wants us to believe that the deficits <i>that they created<\/i> will be cut in half by 2006. If everything they&#8217;ve said so far has turned out to be wrong, why would anyone believe them now?<\/p>\n<p>Fool me once&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The fact that the budget deficit has reached $455 billion appears to be generating quite a bit of attention in the national media, which is certainly a good thing. The public needs to realize that their government is running up quite a bill &#8212; and that all of us will be paying the costs for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}