{"id":6760,"date":"2006-03-03T12:29:27","date_gmt":"2006-03-03T17:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6760"},"modified":"2006-03-03T12:29:27","modified_gmt":"2006-03-03T17:29:27","slug":"cheneys-ironic-lecture-on-the-peril-of-debt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/cheneys-ironic-lecture-on-the-peril-of-debt\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheney’s ironic lecture on the peril of debt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dick Cheney seems to believe he’s in a position to lecture on the importance of fiscal responsibility<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Vice President Dick Cheney urged Americans Thursday to do a better job of saving and challenged policymakers to strengthen pensions and fix Social Security to help people in their golden years.<\/p>\n

“The American dream begins with saving money and that should begin on the very first day of work,” Cheney told a conference here exploring how to encourage people to boost savings and be better prepared for retirement.<\/p>\n

Too often, workers are living paycheck to paycheck and are not saving sufficiently, Cheney said. Last year, Americans’ personal savings rate dropped to its lowest point since the Great Depression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are a couple of ways to consider this. One is to point out that it’s easy for Cheney to say this; he’s a millionaire. Another is to note that wages since Bush took office haven’t grown in a way that makes it possible for the typical family to save as much as they’d like.<\/p>\n

But for me, I like the irony angle. Right around the time the Vice President urged the nation to budget responsibly and plan ahead through savings, Congress heard a slightly different take<\/a> on national savings from the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Treasury officials told Congress that the government needed to increase the $8.2-trillion national debt by another $781 billion to meet expenses.<\/p>\n

“During this administration, America’s debt, that is the total of the deficits, has increased by $3 trillion,” said Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, the top Democrat on the Finance Committee. “That’s a 40% increase in the entire federal debt accrued by our country in its entire history.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And Dick “deficits don’t matter” Cheney believes he has the credibility to tell Americans they’re not saving enough?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dick Cheney seems to believe he’s in a position to lecture on the importance of fiscal responsibility. Vice President Dick Cheney urged Americans Thursday to do a better job of saving and challenged policymakers to strengthen pensions and fix Social Security to help people in their golden years. “The American dream begins with saving money […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6760","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}