Bush Administration's Mounting Fiscal Disaster

November 5, 2004

President Bush said yesterday, "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it." Translation: President Bush and congressional conservatives plan to drive the country into severe economic distress by permanently extending supply-side tax cuts for the wealthy, privatizing Social Security, and giving more handouts to corporations with no means to pay for these schemes. All of this domestic spending will come on top of potentially hundreds of billions of dollars that will be spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Bush and congressional conservatives have promised trillions of dollars in corporate kickbacks and tax cuts for the wealthy. Over the past four years, conservatives spent lavishly on a faulty Medicare drug program, corporate tax subsidies, a bloated farm bill, and multiple rounds of tax handouts to the rich. Now they want to gut Social Security by opening a $2 trillion hole in the retirement program and ensuring billions in handouts to the financial services sector.

They have no intention of paying for these schemes. The days of conservative fiscal hawks are long gone. The current crop of conservative leaders believes it's their duty to capture government resources to dole out as they see fit. They care little if the government falls into bankruptcy or the American economy grinds to a halt. The current situation makes it impossible to properly prepare for the retirement of the baby boom retirement, yet the president has offered no viable solutions to our longer-term fiscal challenges.

The president's corporate backers will be laughing all the way to the bank while American taxpayers will be forced to clean up the mess. Who wins in this scheme? Energy companies, the pharmaceutical industry, health insurers, and the financial services sector all paid lavishly to elect Bush and his cohorts and now expect a return on their investment. But generations of American taxpayers will have to pay to clean up this fiscal disaster long after the president has retired to the ranch.