Fiscal Irresponsibility
Article in the Nogales International
April 13, 2006
Don Irving
Sonoita, AZ.
The national debt of the United States recently passed $8.2 trillion and last month Congress raised the debt limit to $9 trillion. That debt which we all owe has increased from $5.7 trillion since the current administration took office. Such uncontrolled debt expansion is just the tip of the financial iceberg we are steaming toward. With the inclusion of unfunded commitments like Social Security and Medicare and less obvious kinds of debt like growing international trade imbalances the combined debt approaches $70 trillion. These figures are so astronomical that they seem unreal. But they are real and when understood in terms of the impact on the lives of each of us, it is sobering. A recent AARP article calculated that every child born in the U.S. in 2005 entered the world owing $156,300, the debt load each of us carries. Continuation of this debt and projected spending, without a willingness to increase revenues to pay the bills, amounts to fiscal irresponsibility.
Substantial deception and mendacity by the Bush administration has led to this condition. An ill-conceived war that has cost over 2,300 American lives and 17,000 life-altering injuries also has a financial impact. Originally we were told it might cost up to $70 billion. Before the invasion when Larry Lindsay, Bush's top economic advisor estimated it would cost $200 billion Bush fired him. The Iraq War is now costing $1 billion per week, approaching $300 billion or about $19,300 per American household. Most of these funds are not even in the budget, they are supplemental appropriations adding directly to the deficit.
The hyperbole used to push for the tax cuts of 2001 was deceptive about who would benefit, and dishonest about budget math. The tax-cutting program has exacerbated a two decade trend to 2003 which has produced startling income inequality. IRS data show that after-tax incomes of the richest 1 per cent of Americans increased an average of $49,000. to $620,000, while the bottom 75 per cent remained unchanged. The 24 per cent in-between increased little more than 1 per cent. University of Arizona economist Marshall Vest said of Arizona, "we are a State of Haves and Have nots." In the same period the poorest one-fifth of Arizona families had an average increase of $854 to raise their income to an average of $15,719 while the wealthiest one-fifth of families incomes on average grew $44,500 to $121,135.
President-Bush has said "the bestway to solve the deficit is to grow the economy - not run up your taxes." But the reality is that his tax cuts alone, which mostly benefit the wealthy, have added more than a trillion dollars to the national debt. According to the Congressional Budget Office, if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, deficits will persist for at least 10 years - $35 billion this year, $1.2 trillion over the next decade.
Recently the White House staff has attempted to portray the president as concerned about fiscal discipline and point to modest budget cuts that Congress passed. But this president has a huge credibility problem. The $236 billion surplus left by the Clinton administration has turned into a Bush administration annual deficit of $400 billion. Those "modest" cuts, approximately $40 billion over five years, will be achieved by an onslaught on the sick, the poor, the old and college students. Medicaid will cost recipients $4.8 billion more over five years. Reductions in Child Support Enforcement Funding means $2.9 billion will go uncollected. But the largest cuts will be in College Student Aid. "This is the biggest cut in the history of the Federal Student Loan Program." said David Ward, head of the American Council on Education.
Each time the president asks for a tax cut for the wealthiest among us (Bush calls his supporters "the Haves and Have Mores"), it is destructive to the interests of working people, the poor and the young. Kevin Phillips, a former Republican strategist, describes the current administration as one with "catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility, rampant greed and dangerous shortsightedness."
