Matt Miller’s NPR commentary about the Bush budget includes the following details:
- A deficit of 521 billion means borrowing almost 1 out of 4 dollars in the budget.
- It includes 300 billion in tax cuts that go mostly to the rich, but ignores the 25 trillion dollar shortfall in social security and medicare that will start to come due in five years.
- Bush plans to send an addendum to the budget to cover the growing costs of the US military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan after the November elections.
- Finally, bush plans to blame this spending on congress instead admitting that the real problem is the huge tax cuts that have shorted government revenue from 19% of GDP to 16% almost overnight. Meanwhile, government spending is actually down to 20% of GDP from the 21% it was through the 1980s.
What’s the lesson here? We’re borrowing more to get fewer government services (like no healthcare), while Bush mortgages our future to grandstand on taxes. To make things easy, Miller wants us to remember the following mathematical facts: 20 < 21 and 16 < 19.