THE FISCAL WRECKAGE

The debt that we will hand over to the next generation is now growing at a fantastic rate. Even the Bush administration’s own rosy estimates predict that this president will have landed the country with almost $2 trillion of accumulated new debt in the next five years. I think you can forgive some extra spending to avoid a depression and to pay for two vital wars and homeland defense. But the sheer scale of damage the administration is doing to our future economic and military strength is still deeply worrying. Non-military, non-homeland defense domestic spending increased by 6 percent in Bush’s first year and close to 5 percent the following year (far beyond the rate of inflation). He is now adding a huge new entitlement to Medicare, tied to one of the commodities with the fastest rate of price increases in the economy: prescription drugs. The defenses of Bush higlight how much of the new spending was vital of our security (a good point), how much more profligate the Democrats would be (not a good enough point) and how the tax cuts will eventually increase revenues (but enough to counterbalance all that spending?). All I’d say is that no conservative can be happy to observe the phenomenal growth of government under this president. The sheer fact of moving from long-term surplus to fast-mounting debt and structural deficits in a mere two years will be a damning election argument. Right now, the president doesn’t seem even to acknowledge that there’s a problem. But it’s a far bigger one than some phony hysteria about a minor CIA goof. He needs to figure out how to reverse this trend and address it in the looming campaign.