My 78-year-old father said it best: What has George W Bush left to break? America's reputation abroad is in tatters. Iraq is a wreck. New Orleans is gone. And the U.S. economy is dramatically, perhaps irrevocably, crashing. More below the fold on the economy.
In 1981, as President Carter left office, the national debt was at its lowest point (when measured as a percentage of gross domestic product, as it should be) since World War II. During the Reagan-Bush I years, national debt skyrocketed from 32.5% of GDP to almost 50% of GDP. Massive spending--especially on defense--while lowering taxes had the predictable outcome: Escalating debt.
Clinton lowered the debt, while stimulating economic growth overall. He handed a healthy economy to George W Bush at the start of 2001. Almost eight years later, our vibrant economy is in shreds. Unprecedented deficit spending, deregulation of banks and other institutions, divorcing financial risk from yield, encouraging mortgages that buyers would never be able to meet (including mortgages with no downpayment)....
The proposed pricetag alone signals how ominous the situation is. How much is 700 billion dollars? That's 5% of our Gross Domestic Product--five percent of everything our economy produces in a year. And no one even knows whether that will solve the problem.
I certainly wouldn't support the buyout without the caveats Obama and other Democrats are demanding. But the very pricetag suggests what a dire mess we are in--and underlines the fact that no one knows how we will get out.
I spent part of the day talking to voters in central Ohio. And I'm hopeful that Obama will get elected. To me, it's no longer a campaign for hope, but one for survival. Because at the end of our conversation, my father noted that there are still a few more things the McCain could break if elected: social security, the health care insurance we do have, the infrastructure of our roads and bridges, and the lives of still more Americans in wrongheaded wars. It's heartbreaking.