I don't know about you, but sometimes the newspapers don't explain the extent of our fiscal mess very clearly. Let's see if we can jointly create a scenario that will help the American public understand the extent to which Bush is mortgaging the future of our children. Please send feedback and I'll create a revised version later.
President Bush's proposed budget calls for expenditures of $2.57 trillion dollars, which is the same as $2,570 billion. The planned deficit is $427 billion, so planned 2006 income is found by subtracting $427 billion from $2570 billion, or $2,143 billion. (continued after the fold)
Dividing the proposed deficit by the proposed income ($427/$2143) shows us that President Bush plans to spend about 20% more than he is taking in this year.
President Bush also plans to ask Congress for an additional $81 billion this year as a "Supplement" to pay the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is choosing to not include this in his budget because Congress in theory has the right to refuse this supplemental request, but you can imagine how hard it is to refuse a request to help the troops in wartime. Therefore, to be realistic, let's say that the Bush budget for 2006 is $2,570 billion + $81 billion, or a new total of $2,651 billion.
The realistic deficit is $2,651 billion in expenses minus $2,143 billion in income, or $508 billion. If you divide the $508 billion deficit by the $2,143 income, you find that President Bush proposes to spend almost 24 percent more than he will take in during fiscal year 2006 (which runs October 1, 2005 through September 30, 2006).
It is hard to understand how anyone can spend billions of dollars, so let's reduce the proposed Fiscal Year 2006 federal budget to the level of one household. To make our calculations easier, let's just call our household income $50,000.
Imagine you will earn $50,000 in 2006. If your budget is comparable to the federal budget, you will spend not only that entire $50,000, but also 24% more, or an additional $12,000.
President Bush promises he will cut the federal deficit in half by 2009, but there are a lot of factors in the economy he cannot control. In addition, he is planning to add trillions of dollars in debt for his new Social Security plan. Taking him at his word, and assuming the deficit goes down evenly each of the next three years, our one-household deficit will be $12,000 in 2006, $10,000 in 2007, $8,000 in 2008, and $6,000 in 2009. What this means, without all the economic-speak, is that if your household were to be run like the federal government, you will have racked up $36,000 in debt in just four years.
You can hope that your income will go up in the next four years, but given the number of jobs that are being outsourced and the artificial way the unemployment numbers are being kept high by minimum wage and seasonal jobs, you may be lucky to still have a job at the $50,000 level in 2009.
Assuming you are still making $50,000 in 2009, that $36,000 in debt will be equal to over $70% of your income. Where will you be able to find anyone to keep lending you the $6,000 you need to stay afloat each year?
Aside from these deficits that President Bush is racking up every year, we already have a total national debt that currently stands at over $7.6 trillion, or $7,600 billion (http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/). With an estimated federal income this year of $2,143 billion, our debt exceeds our income by 355% ($7,600 billion / $2,143 billion). Using our one household example, you would have a household debt of $177,500 ($50,000 x 3.55) that must be serviced while earning only $50,000 and adding another $12,000 to your debt in 2006.
This one-household scenario gives you an idea of why foreign investors are starting to think the United States is not a good place to invest their money. If this trend continues, the United States government will not be able to borrow the estimated $1.86 billion per DAY that we have borrowed since September 30, 2004, and we will have a major financial crisis on our hands.
What is the answer to this looming crisis? The obvious answer is to stop the war in Iraq. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the total cost of military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since September 211, 2001 is $277 billion, which is well above the inflation-adjusted cost of World War I ($200 billion) and well on the way to equaling the cost of the Korean War ($350 billion). (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35029-2005Jan25?language=printer)
Assuming 20 million Iraqis were eligible to vote, 70% registered, and half of them voted, we can assume that 7 million Iraqis voted on January 31 (20 million x .7 = 14 million. 14 million/2 = 7 million). Given that there are war costs for espionage, weapons development, and other things that are not in the $277 billion CBO cost estimate, and given how little the Afghanistan conflict has cost as compared to the Iraq war, let's just use the $277 billion as a rough estimate of the cost of the Iraq conflict since September 11, 2001.
Dividing the $277 billion costs by 7 million votes, American taxpayers have spent $39,571 per Iraqi vote to assure elections that, despite what the Bush White House is telling us, were so far from the international standards for a free and open election that candidates could not campaign openly without fear of death, and international poll monitors had to watch from locations outside Iraq.
I don't know about you, but I would prefer to not spend more than $39,571 per vote in Iraq when we are facing such ominous budget cuts here at home that over fifty Education Department programs and over 150 total domestic programs are facing extreme cutbacks or extinction.
And given the precariousness of our national fiscal health, I would like to see the War Department (sorry, I meant "Defense Department") cut back enough so that we don't plunge ourselves into a fiscal mess that REALLY leads to homeland insecurity.