In A Word: Legacy
Gerald Eisman
May 09, 2006
Legacy: Something handed down from an ancestor or a predecessor or from the past:
When George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, the statutory debt ceiling, or borrowing limit, was $5.95 trillion dollars. That is a daunting sum, but one that the Clinton administration had begun to pay down. Granted, the sum paid down was trifling compared to the size of the borrowing limit, but the limit was still manageable.
Today there is a $2.7 trillion dollar budget plan pending in the House. Passage of the budget will raise the debt ceiling to just short of $10 trillion, this coming less than two short months after the last increase.
Couple that fact with the hope shared by Republican leaders of extending the already in place tax-cuts for the next five years (total cost to America of $70 billion) and you can smell a disaster in the making.
Based on encouraging news on the budget front that showed a surge of tax revenues this spring sparked by stronger than usual economic growth, the Congressional Budget Office revised its deficit projection downward by $70 billion. How strange that the projected budget deficit caused by the tax-cut extension would increase by a similar amount.
Here's another sobering fact unrealized by the voting public. The federal debt keeps growing because of the administration's deficit spending and its voracious borrowing from the Social Security trust fund. That's correct! The very system that George W. and his cohorts have been trying to "fix" since he was first inaugurated is being raided by the prospective fixers.
Considering the budget will be passed, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional "653 billion leaving the ceiling at $9.62 trillion. This increase will be the fifth since George W. took office five years ago.
Permission to make such an increase can be found on page 121 of the 151-page document. Without such an instruction written into the instrument, Congress would be hamstrung and have to openly legislate an increase. By having it in the blueprint increases can be affected with little or no fanfare ? the public won't know, or is it, the public be damned.
When considering the tax-cut extensions, one must pay attention to who will benefit in order to get a fair grasp of its importance to the current Congress. These include deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The extension would also slow increases in the alternative minimum tax for another year. The AMT is a parallel tax system designed to affect the affluent although it is insidiously beginning to affect the middle class as well.
It is expected the Democrats will object strenuously to the increases in both the budget and tax-cut extensions. They will likely point out the several increases in debt limits but the budget is expected to pass although by a much closer margin than the tax-cut extensions.
This is the same budget the House leaders pulled from the floor in April after moderate Republicans objected to planned cuts to health and education programs. At that time appropriators objected to limits placed on pet projects (earmarks) and a provision that would limit emergency spending for natural disasters.
So we are faced with what will be known historically as Bush's legacy. With two more years to go on his second term, we can expect "more of the same" and continual increases in the deficit. The only surprise the nation can hope for is that the deficit doesn't double to $12 trillion before 2008.
There will be no legacy of peace, strengthening of alliances, improving the everyday life of the citizens, or any such mundane stuff. What we will get is the legacy of war, loss of freedoms and civil rights, an almost insurmountable national debt, and the knowledge that the transparency promised was beyond opaque.
When George W. Bush took office in January of 2001, the statutory debt ceiling, or borrowing limit, was $5.95 trillion dollars. That is a daunting sum, but one that the Clinton administration had begun to pay down. Granted, the sum paid down was trifling compared to the size of the borrowing limit, but the limit was still manageable.
Today there is a $2.7 trillion dollar budget plan pending in the House. Passage of the budget will raise the debt ceiling to just short of $10 trillion, this coming less than two short months after the last increase.
Couple that fact with the hope shared by Republican leaders of extending the already in place tax-cuts for the next five years (total cost to America of $70 billion) and you can smell a disaster in the making.
Based on encouraging news on the budget front that showed a surge of tax revenues this spring sparked by stronger than usual economic growth, the Congressional Budget Office revised its deficit projection downward by $70 billion. How strange that the projected budget deficit caused by the tax-cut extension would increase by a similar amount.
Here's another sobering fact unrealized by the voting public. The federal debt keeps growing because of the administration's deficit spending and its voracious borrowing from the Social Security trust fund. That's correct! The very system that George W. and his cohorts have been trying to "fix" since he was first inaugurated is being raided by the prospective fixers.
Considering the budget will be passed, the House will have raised the federal borrowing limit by an additional "653 billion leaving the ceiling at $9.62 trillion. This increase will be the fifth since George W. took office five years ago.
Permission to make such an increase can be found on page 121 of the 151-page document. Without such an instruction written into the instrument, Congress would be hamstrung and have to openly legislate an increase. By having it in the blueprint increases can be affected with little or no fanfare ? the public won't know, or is it, the public be damned.
When considering the tax-cut extensions, one must pay attention to who will benefit in order to get a fair grasp of its importance to the current Congress. These include deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains. The extension would also slow increases in the alternative minimum tax for another year. The AMT is a parallel tax system designed to affect the affluent although it is insidiously beginning to affect the middle class as well.
It is expected the Democrats will object strenuously to the increases in both the budget and tax-cut extensions. They will likely point out the several increases in debt limits but the budget is expected to pass although by a much closer margin than the tax-cut extensions.
This is the same budget the House leaders pulled from the floor in April after moderate Republicans objected to planned cuts to health and education programs. At that time appropriators objected to limits placed on pet projects (earmarks) and a provision that would limit emergency spending for natural disasters.
So we are faced with what will be known historically as Bush's legacy. With two more years to go on his second term, we can expect "more of the same" and continual increases in the deficit. The only surprise the nation can hope for is that the deficit doesn't double to $12 trillion before 2008.
There will be no legacy of peace, strengthening of alliances, improving the everyday life of the citizens, or any such mundane stuff. What we will get is the legacy of war, loss of freedoms and civil rights, an almost insurmountable national debt, and the knowledge that the transparency promised was beyond opaque.
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