The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (3)

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (2)

The Failures of the "Conservative Movement" (1)

I am a daily reader of Andrew Tobias' terrific blog (http://www.andrewtobias.com). Tobias is the author of "The Only Investment Guide You Will Ever Need". This is his entry for March 13, 2008:


RECORD BUDGET DEFICIT

According to this from Reuters:

The U.S. government turned in a $175.56 billion budget deficit for February, a record for any month . . . a 46.3 percent increase over the previous all-time single-month deficit . . . [and] for the first five months of fiscal 2008, which began last October 1, the deficit reached a record $263.26 billion, up 62.3 percent from the $162.16 billion for the same period of fiscal 2007.

The previous record deficit for the first five months of a fiscal year was set in 2004, a year in which the government also reached its previous record full-year deficit of $413 billion. The White House last month estimated that the fiscal 2008 deficit would hit $410 billion, but that excludes undetermined supplemental spending requests for war funding in Iraq and Afghanistan.


F Of course, not only does the reported deficit not include spending for the wars, it also omits the money we are looting from the Social Security Trust Fund. Figure a true deficit by fiscal year’s end that could be within hailing distance of $1 trillion.

The National Debt – $9.4 trillion (up $400 billion since Labor Day) – will, as I’ve long suggested, be $10 trillion by the time Bush leaves office. Three-quarters of that, accumulated since 1776, will have been racked up under just 3 of our 43 presidents: Reagan, Bush, and Bush.

Worse, the National Debt has grown relative to the size of our economy. It was 30% of our GDP when Reagan took office; it will be about 70% of GDP when Bush leaves.

Overall, more than 85% of the debt will have been racked up under Republican Administrations.

The interest on this mostly Republican debt now amounts to about 40% of all the personal income tax we pay. The closer it gets to 100%, the less we have to spend on anything else.