Top fiscal watchdog delivers stinging attack on deficit

[RamboLiberal]

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/04023/264717.stm

The U.S. comptroller general, David Walker, laid out a blistering attack on the nation's growing deficit yesterday, saying it is undermining the future of the nation and putting an all-but-intolerable tax burden on future generations.

"The path we're on is imprudent and unsustainable,'' he said.

Walker, a balding, meticulously dressed man whose background is as a certified public accountant, does not look like a rabble rouser. But that's what he has become.

In a session with reporters, Walker, who also heads the General Accounting Office, the non-partisan watchdog arm of Congress, said he has become convinced that neither the Bush administration nor members of Congress nor the public understand how serious a problem the nation's public debt and rising deficit are becoming.

<snip>

Asked about Vice President Dick Cheney's remark -- reported by former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, whom Cheney had fired -- that deficits do not matter, Walker said Cheney may believe that deficits don't matter politically, but that the vice president can't possibly believe that they don't matter for the economy.

"Deficits do matter -- especially when they are large, structural and growing,'' Walker said.

[Faygo Kid]

1. Just what GWB wants: "Starve the Beast"

Many of us saw this coming since the start of the Bush presidency. Tax cuts for the rich, to the ruination of the rest of us. The "President" will tell us there is only one thing left to do after he hijacks a second term: Destroy the social safety net; dismantle the New Deal. It's all so obvious; why should anyone be surprised?

[kysrsoze]

2. Bingo.

[colorado_ufo]

4. The plan from Day 1

seems to have as its aim turning us into a Third World Country, with the very rich and the very poor - no middle class.

Without belaboring the idea, do this little exercise: take every bill, tax cut, law, etc. that has been passed or proposed, and weigh it against this as its long-term, eventual, inescapable outcome.

For example, * now proposes throwing open our borders to let Mexican workers fill every low-paying job--with unemployment already at a terrible high, and the tech sector hard-hit. The result? Pretty soon even a burger-flippin' job will have half a dozen people of all ages competing for it, as there will be no unemployment compensation left and no social security.

Picture people fighting each other in line for a chance to say, "You want fries with that?"

[bearfan454]

23. JFC ! You are correct.

I see right now women in their 30's and 40's making hamburgers here in the Austin Tx area at Short Stop. This shit is scary.

[54anickel]

3. So where the heck was this guy for the past 3 years? n/t

[teryang]

7. Actually, he has been critical publicly

...for some time with this. A democratic representative was on CNBC this morning telling the right wing dummies the economic realities they didn't want to hear. The deficit is really $650 Billion not 500 billion. Their commentary attempting to minimize this huge problem and the incredible damage it is going to do to retiring baby boomers was complete denial. The representative reminded the viewers that the Comptroller General is a republican.

Our economy is crippled right now. Cheap credit funding construction of homes and auto purchases is virtually the only thing keeping it going. That and profligate waste in the Defense department. The truly private economy is under great stress and throwing a lot of employees overside if they haven't done so already.

Er, how do you pay your mortgages and debts without a job?

[alittlelark]

10. Simple, you don't pay the mortgage

You are forclosed on and the rich make a fortune off of cheap real estate!!

Welcome to our future!!

[teryang]

17. my future too!

I hope not but it's stressing me out.

[Toots]

5. Should be our new motto ~ "Do Deficits Matter?"

Bumper sticker material. Or how about "It's the Deficit Stupid"

[alittlelark]

8. It's the deficit stupid

Really, really good:think:. I may print one up for my car

[bvar22]

6. It's worse than that.

It is an unfettered, sociopathic, feeding frenzy of GREED for a few privileged people.

The Cheney cabal really aren't concerned about the future or the National Debt. Cheney and his group of criminals have set this up so that they can make a KILLING, and then duck out. Using the Propaganda cover of a TAX BREAK for Americans, the Cheney criminals have really substituted a plan for shifting the burden of repaying the National Debt to the backs of the Middle Class(soon to be working poor), and the poor.

The bush* Administration has RAISED TAXES on the Middle Class (anyone making under $230,000)!!!

As these republican criminals drive this country deeper into debt, each citizens portion of the National Debt INCREASES! These bills will come due! There is NO TAX BREAK!! These criminals have merely restructured the payment plan over a longer period of time with the accompanying INCREASE IN INTEREST PAYMENTS!!

In order to protect the ULTRA RICH from having to repay these loans, the republican criminals DEMANDED:

1) An end to the INHERITANCE TAX.
2) Elimination of Capital Gains Tax
3) A shift in Income Tax to the Middle Class.

They know their little scam will be exposed shortly....no wonder the chimp* is parading around insisting on more cuts for the WEALTHY, and to make these changes permanent!!!

May these criminals BURN IN HELL

This is the Lesson of the Reagan Tax Cuts to which Cheney was refering:

It is like an irresponsible adolescent with a new credit card. For a while, this kid will appear prosperous as he spends borrowed money...a new stereo, flashy clothes...maybe even a car or motorcycle...life is good. But bills come due. Unlike the irresponsible adolescent who will reach a debt ceiling, the Federal Government simply raises our collective limit. The republican criminals are out of control! Their GREED is driving them to get all they can for them and their few friends.

And this is EXACTLY what is happening in our ECONOMY at this moment. We appear to be in a recovery. But this Economic Miracle is being created with BORROWED MONEY. These bills will come due! The republican criminals are working furiously to make sure that it will be the Middle Class who will have to pay them.

[Beetwasher]

9. Yup, That 'Bout Sums Up the Whole Horrific Mess

Hard times ahead indeed :shudder:

[joeunderdog]

12. Consumer debt is the highest since the Great Depression.

Overextension of credit was a key contributer to the crash.

Watch out below!

[sendero]

22. I agree with...

... every point made, including a couple I hadn't thought of :)

The people of America have NO IDEA what we are getting ourselves into here. It is going to be absolutely brutal.

[indepat]

11. The deficits are large, structural and growing by design:

all reasonably thinking or knowledgeable persons know they are imprudent and unsustainable. It's get it while we can boys, to hell with all the havoc we reek.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

13. Should probably roll back the tax cuts then.

[llmart]

14. Dean is the only candidate

courageous enough to say he will roll back the tax cuts.

[emc]

15. whats ruined this country

Beer, sit-coms and lottery tickets------

It appears to me that this public isn't going to worry about anything political much less deficits until legislation is passed canceling sit-coms, out lawing beer and doing away with lottery tickets......these three things keep the publics head in the sand-------as long as they can have the dream of becoming rich buy spending the weeks salary on lottery tickets, drinking themselves into a stupor and watching sit-coms of how the typical American family is having so much fun in life, nothing is going to be done to lift America out of this bottomless hole. Its all a plan by the net works, keep the American public distracted.

[ramapo]

16. Read what Eisenhower said about deficits

Below are some quotes from Ike's last SOTU in 1960. They seem almost quaint today.

What would he say about the voodoo Republican economics of today?

Here're Ike's words...

"We must fight inflation as we would a fire that imperils our home. Only by so doing can we prevent it from destroying our salaries, savings, pensions and insurance, and from gnawing away the very roots of a free, healthy economy and the nation's security.

One major method by which the Federal government can counter inflation and rising prices is to insure that its expenditures are below its revenues. The debt with which we are now confronted is about 290 billion dollars. With interest charges alone now costing taxpayers about $9 1/2 billions, it is clear that this debt growth must stop.

I shall present to the Congress for 1961 a balanced budget.... "

And a bit later, he states:

""I repeat, this budget will be a balanced one... The amount of income over outgo, described in the budget as a Surplus, to be applied against our national debt, is 4 billion 2 hundred million. Personally, I do not feel that any amount can be properly called a "Surplus" as long as the nation is in debt. I prefer to think of such an item as "reduction on our children's inherited mortgage." Once we have established such payments as normal practice, we can profitably make improvements in our tax structure and thereby truly reduce the heavy burdens of taxation. ""

[teryang]

18. Actually inflation helps debtors but...

...penalizes creditors. Savers are hurt dramatically while costs of services escalate. This is why there is a constant drive to cheapen labor and manipulate the cost of materials downward with derivatives, jawboning, colonialism, globalization, World Bank market liberalization, etc.

The problem is that "free trade" policies hurt corporate behemoths as well so they are compensated with huge government tax breaks, hand outs, subsidies, contracts, and under the table protectionism. They are legally encouraged to move their production and profits offshore in a competition for the cheapest and most unfair markets (bordering on slavery) to escape the Alice in Wonderland fiscal policies.

War and globalism are the last ditch strategies of those "free trader" corporations with CIA/Pentagon connections, plundering foreign and domestic governments and markets to remain "competitive."

[rman]

21. Jefferson, Greenspan

Thomas Jefferson
"...the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale."

Alan Greenspan
"Deficit spending is simply a scheme for confiscation of wealth."

[ozone_man]

24. The last good Republican.

This message needs to be adopted by the Democratic candidates, unfortunately most of them are no different than Bush. Big deficit spenders. I think Dean is the only one who has adequately addressed this issue.

[KayLaw]

19. Warned again

Remember last February when over 400 economists, including 10 Nobel prize winners, took out that ad in the New York Times, warning against Bush's policies, and then, more recently, the embarrassing concern shown by the IMF.

I know a lot of what the Bush people do is deliberate, but I've come to believe they were just as shocked by the December jobs as everyone else.

I hope certain Americans voters will get over their goofy Clinton obsessions and vote responsibly and in their own best interests this November.

[doc03]

20. What ever happened to the Concord Coalition and debt clock?

I guess the debt only mattered when Clinton was President! Where in the hell is Ross Perot and his pie charts?