LIBERADIO(!)

Today in Nashville, the MBA president, George Bush, not only blamed everyone else for his fiscal incontinence but showed his complete lack of understanding of our budding long term financial crisis by saying, “We project if we can continue to have fiscal sanity in Washington, D.C. that we we’ll be in surplus by the year 2012.”

Continue to have fiscal what now?

Let’s review. According to the Office of Management and Budget, federal outlays in Fiscal Year 2001 totaled $1.86 trillion. In fiscal year 2007, they totaled $2.78 trillion. And according to the Senate Budget Committee, President Bush not only increased our debt by more than $3 trillion but he also doubled foreign-held debt. And I’m not even going to mention the fuzzy math he’s using to calculate the deficit. As bad as this is, however, it gets worse. The Concord Coalition, a nationwide, grass roots organization advocating generationally responsible fiscal policy, reminds us that our fiscal decisions must go well beyond what may be needed to balance the budget in the short-term:

The baby boomers’ imminent retirement will usher in a permanent rise in the cost of programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, which already comprise 40 percent of the federal budget. Demographic change, however, is only part of the problem. For the past several decades, health care spending has outpaced economic growth by a substantial margin. If this situation persists, it will greatly compound the growing fiscal problems attributable to the rising number of aged. With all this, federal government spending is on track to go from about 20 percent of our national economy (GDP) today to roughly 30 percent by 2030. There is currently no plan to pay for it all other than running up the national debt.

For more of the real story, read up on The Fiscal Wake Up Tour (a bi-partisan group of economic patriots who came to Nashville on Monday) and listen to U.S. Congressman Jim “Coop” Cooper (D – the fightin’ 5th!), who issued the following statement in response to the President’s comments today:

“I don’t blame President Bush for emphasizing positive economic news. But he has borrowed more money from foreign nations than every President in American history combined. His own Treasury Department says that the true budget deficits in recent years are twice as large as the President admits. The Comptroller General says that federal obligations were $20 trillion when Bush took office but have skyrocketed to $50 trillion just six years later. The leading credit analyst on Wall Street, Standard & Poors, is projecting that the U.S. will lose its AAA credit rating by 2012. These aren’t Democratic attacks, but truthful statements from the nation’s top budget experts.

“On Monday, U.S. Comptroller General David Walker and a bipartisan group of leading policy experts came to Nashville to talk about the true state of our nation’s finances. And each member of the ‘Fiscal Wake Up Tour’ delivered the same message: our nation long-term financial outlook is dire. We must act soon to prevent fiscal disaster.

“We can solve these problems before they get out of hand, but it will require honesty from our elected officials. President Bush missed a great opportunity today.”

The Concord Coalition, a Fiscal Wake-Up Tour participant, has also suggested some questions we should all be asking the 2008 presidential candidates.

Only 550 days to go and counting.