Legacy of debt

Tuesday, Feb. 5, 2008 | 2 a.m.

President Bush presented his final budget to Congress on Monday and actually said with a straight face that it will place Washington on a path to achieve fiscal responsibility by 2012.

Not since the final year of the Clinton administration has federal spending been equated with responsibility. Bush inherited spending and tax policies projected to produce a $5.6 trillion surplus over the next 10 years necessary when looking ahead to retirements by Baby Boomers.

Yet Bush proceeded to increase federal spending by 25 percent from 2001 to 2007, according to The Wall Street Journal. And in 2001 and 2003 he pushed through tax cuts for wealthy Americans that will total $1.7 trillion by 2011.

No one could tell Bush that increased spending and tax cuts do not make for sound monetary policy, so here we are, in his final year, with a budget showing near-record deficits a total of $817 billion for the rest of this year and fiscal year 2009.

The projected surplus has long since vanished.

Now Bush is saying that if Congress accepts his budget, federal spending and revenue will be balanced in four years and even produce a modest surplus.

But the budget includes only $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for 2009, when the actual amount, based on past spending, will likely be well in excess of $100 billion. Bush is also assuming in his budget that Congress will go along with staggering cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and hundreds of other federal services, and the elimination of 151 programs.

Bush’s $3.1 trillion budget, which audaciously anticipates the extension of his tax cuts, aptly reflects his legacy mismanaged wars, harder times ahead for low- and middle-income wage earners, looming crises in health care and retiree costs, deficits and gratuitous tax cuts for the wealthy.

No wonder so many Americans are counting the days until the next president is sworn into office.