George Bush, Financial Pedophile
Even if Bush succeeds in slashing the deficit in half in four years, as he has pledged, his major policy prescriptions would leave his successor with massive financial commitments that begin rising dramatically the year he relinquishes the White House, according to an analysis of new budget figures.
Bush's extensive tax cuts, the new Medicare prescription drug benefit and, if it passes, his plan to redesign Social Security all balloon in cost several years from now. His plan to partially privatize Social Security, for instance, would cost a total of $79.5 billion in the last two budgets that Bush will propose as president and an additional $675 billion in the five years that follow. New Medicare figures likewise show the cost almost twice as high as originally estimated, largely because it mushrooms long after the Bush presidency.
Yes, the USA is hosed. All of Bush's spend and borrow stupidity is going to blow up in everyone's face in 2008.
And presuming the Democrats win the Whitehouse then, its going to be the nuclear mother in law of all poison pills for them.
More on the flip.
'By the time the next president comes along, some analysts said, not only will there be little if any flexibility for any new initiatives, but the entire four-year term could be spent figuring out how to accommodate the long-range cost of Bush's policies.
"That president would have to face a very fundamental decision as to whether he would want to do what was right and be a one-term president or continue to play the same game and push it onto his successor," said Leon E. Panetta, who served as budget director and later White House chief of staff under President Bill Clinton (news - web sites). "That's really the choice that's going to face the next president."
So does the next President show a spine and some actual morals for once? And thereby condemn his/her political party to suffer the wrath of outraged voters as the cuts and costs finally begin hitting home?
Or do they simply keep on trying to push it off and make it even worse in the process?
Two choices, both suck.
' Bush advisers argue that he is tackling problems long ducked by other presidents and that his solutions will pay off in the long run. Joshua B. Bolten, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, predicted last week that making the Bush tax cuts permanent could have positive economic consequences that would mitigate their costs. And he expressed hope that the Medicare prescription drug law may still result in health care savings not captured in the current cost estimates.'
As a wise soldier once said, "Hope is not a plan."
And no matter how you try to spin the numbers, the math doesn't add up. Cutting taxes NEVER increases your revenues through economic growth, because that same growth raises your COSTS even faster.
'As for Social Security, Bush aides said that the president's plan would wipe out a long-term structural deficit facing the nation in coming decades and that the transition costs in the next decade or so will ultimately be overshadowed by the benefits. "People in the future are going to benefit from that decision," said budget office spokesman Chad Kolton.
Bullshit. Plain and simple. Why is the 'liberal' media letting them get away with these baldfaced lies? Bush's ideas make the problems worse instead of solving them.
'If Congress were to pass Bush's Social Security plan and permanently extend his tax cuts, the budget deficit would bottom out at $251 billion in 2008, then climb steadily to $335 billion by 2015, according to an analysis by The Washington Post and the House Budget Committee's Democratic staff. Those figures assume, however, that Bush will secure all of his proposed spending cuts, that he will need no more emergency war spending and that there will be no changes to the alternative minimum tax, which Bush and other politicians want to rewrite to keep it from affecting more middle-class families in coming years.'
And how many people actually believe Bush or the GOP aren't going to find some way to jack up spending over the next 2 years at least?
'The looming problems were easily foreseeable, said Joyce, the public policy professor. The White House and Congress vowed last year to keep the 10-year cost of a prescription drug bill to $400 billion. But to do it, the 2004 law did not come fully into effect until 2006. Hence, legislation once priced below $400 billion over 10 years now will cost at least $724 billion over a decade, simply because the law would then be fully in effect.
Tax cuts approved in 2001 and 2003 were held to $1.7 trillion through an array of slow phase-ins, phase-outs and a Dec. 31, 2010, end date when all of the tax cuts would vanish. Now, Bush wants them made permanent, but according to White House numbers, a five-year extension beyond 2010 would cost nearly $1.1 trillion.
Likewise, Bush is proposing a Social Security restructuring that would cost $754 billion through 2015, including added interest costs for the government. But like the tax cuts and drug benefit, the proposal would begin slowly, with initial borrowing in 2009. The plan would be fully effective in 2011. Rep. John M. Spratt Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, told Treasury Secretary John W. Snow on Wednesday that the first full 10 years of the program would cost $1.4 trillion, rising to $3.5 trillion in the second decade.
One tax proposal alone underscores the problem. A Bush plan to establish broad new tax-free savings accounts would actually raise $17 billion in the first five years, as savers cash out other tax-free accounts, pay taxes on their withdrawals and roll the money into the new accounts. But in the second five years, the proposal would cost $15 billion, according to Treasury figures. And the cost would rise sharply from there, as the accounts began shielding virtually all American savers from capital-gains, dividend and interest taxation.'
Its enough to make you sick, isn't it? This makes ENRON look like the standard of accounting by comparison. From 2008 and on, the budget takes a swift ride on a handbasket to Hell.