Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Bush to leave a record budget deficit of $482 billion

His entire presidency has been marked by his staggering indifference, by his callous lack of care, so it would be too much to expect Bush to have any regrets - or any feelings at all - about leaving behind the worst deficit in US history.

His successor will move into the White House faced with two unfinished wars and a staggering $482 billion budget deficit. And the man leaving the White House will have no regrets, as he has already decided that history will decide the legacy of his presidency and that the decision will not be valid until he is dead.

I suppose he has no choice other than to hope that history will validate his terrible time in office as today's figures render his presidency one of the worst, if not the very worst, of all time.

An astonishing 81% of Americans say that their country is on the wrong track. Four out of every five people. And Bush thinks history might in some way reverse such a track record of utter failure?

White House officials blamed the slowing economy and a $150-billion bipartisan stimulus package for the worsening picture for the 2009 fiscal year, but Democrats cited the president's tax cuts and fiscal management over his eight years in office.
The truth is that, although the White House say publicly that this has nothing to do with Bush's enormous tax gift to the rich, in reality this is only so much window dressing. Dick Cheney, the man whose reply was, "So?" when told that the two thirds of the country disagreed with administration's Iraq policy, simply doesn't care what people think. This is why Bush thinks history will judge him better than his electorate, because he knows the electorate disagree with him and has therefore concluded that they can't know what they are talking about.

It's a quite staggering combination of incompetence and arrogance.
"If we gave Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility, President Bush would take the gold, the silver and the bronze, because he's got the three highest record deficits ever," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-S.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. "He sets records in every single category: 2009 would be the gold; 2004 the silver; 2008 the bronze."

Rep. John M. Spratt Jr. (D-S.C.) noted that Bush inherited a budget surplus from his Democratic predecessor, so the blame for the poor fiscal performance rests with him.
"Mr. Bush came to office with the biggest surpluses in history and he will leave office with the biggest deficit in history. That's the bottom line," said Spratt, chairman of the House Budget Committee.
That is, indeed, the bottom line. For even if one were to accept Bush's logic that 9-11 (and the war on terror which followed) was responsible for his deficits then one would still have to ask why the price for "defending freedom" has been passed to another generation and why this generation has awarded itself tax cuts rather than do what every other American administration has done at a time of war and ask that the people make a sacrifice. That the people contribute to the war effort.

But Bush's supporters, and they are mostly now confined to a few brave typists at right wing blogs, have been asked to make no sacrifice at all to support Bush and his illegal Iraq war. There are no bombs falling in America's streets, there is no rationing, there is not even a financial price to pay.

All of that has been safely pushed down the road to be paid for by other people.

That is what makes the Bush presidency such a stain on America's character. They didn't even have the decency to pay for the misadventure themselves. They claimed that they were fighting for the survival of an entire civilisation, but declined to pick up the bill, preferring that their own good life should continue uninterrupted, despite the supposed enormity of the enemy they claimed to face.

Oh no, wait. There was a sacrifice. The president gave up golf.

Thank the Lord. For a moment there I thought we were simply dealing with greedy unscrupulous bastards.

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