What a long, strange trip it’s been for George W. Bush when it comes to federal budget deficits.<\/p>\n
As has already been reported, we’re on track for at least a $400 billion deficit this year and more deficits lasting indefinitely into the future. Didn’t Bush just tell America a few months ago<\/a> that “we will not pass along our problems to other Congresses, to other presidents, and other generations”?<\/p>\n Tomorrow, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office will release a revised forecast<\/a> predicting a $500 billion deficit next year — for the math impaired, that’s half a trillion dollars. Some economists, even some Bush allies<\/a>, believe it may even reach $535 billion next year.<\/p>\n Late last week, when asked by a reporter about the deficit, Bush said<\/a>, “I am more concerned about somebody finding a job than I am about numbers on paper.”<\/p>\n What an odd response. The president with the worst record on job creation<\/a> since the Great Depression is telling us his top economic concern is unemployment. I guess that’s the right priority; it’s a shame he hasn’t actually had any success in this area.<\/p>\n But calling the deficit “numbers on paper” is equally bizarre. To hear Bush tell it, these budget figures don’t mean anything. Record-high deficits and trillions of dollars added to the national debt are just inconsequential statistics. This is the same Bush who once called for a balanced budget amendment<\/a> to the Constitution because we “owe it to our children” to stay away from deficits. In 2001, he described deficits as “dangerous”<\/a> and promised to pay down “an unprecedented amount of our national debt.” In 2002, he promised<\/a> “our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term.”<\/p>\n Now, after helplessly failing to deliver on his old priorities, Bush simply changes his mind and creates new priorities. How convenient.<\/p>\n Sounds like Bush’s promises are just “words on paper.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What a long, strange trip it’s been for George W. Bush when it comes to federal budget deficits. As has already been reported, we’re on track for at least a $400 billion deficit this year and more deficits lasting indefinitely into the future. Didn’t Bush just tell America a few months ago that “we will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","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=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nGone are Bush’s concerns about exorbitant annual expenditures in paying the interest on the nation’s debt. The fact that long-term interest rates have been going up steadily over the last year, precisely because of Bush’s fiscal policies, has become irrelevant.<\/p>\n