On NPR this morning, I heard a report that this year’s federal budget deficit came in about $100 billion less than originally projected. President Bush is proclaiming victory and progress in his promise to cut the deficit in half by the end of his term. Democrats are accusing Bush of using smoke and mirrors to hide massive fiscal irresponsibility.
They’re both right. It’s great that we’re not going into debt as fast as we had feared and we should be happy that the deficit is less than it had been projected. And it’s also unacceptable that a wealthy, powerful nation like ours is deficit spending at all.
Bush’s long-term plan to cut the deficit to $150 billion annually in fiscal 2008 is not a sufficiently ambitious one.
It seems the sitting president gets a lot of criticism, and the ones who preceded him did a so much better job. Makes you wonder who’s going to be there after Bush and what that person will do to make Bush look good in comparison…
>shudder<