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Ladies & Gentlemen, the President YOU Elected and
the Senators You Wanted
(via msnbc.com)

(Economy? What economy?)

"Last night, with the federal government warning that it was on the verge of defaulting on its debts, the House rejected efforts to reimpose restrictions on tax cuts and spending, then joined the Senate to raise the federal debt limit by $800 billion, to $8.18 trillion."

"The collapse of statutory restraints on the growing budget deficit has alarmed Wall Street, befuddled the Treasury Department and elicited calls for a rethinking of the way the government handles its authority to tax its citizens and spend those proceeds."

"With last night's passage of the debt ceiling increase, the government's borrowing limit has climbed by $2.23 trillion since President Bush took office: by $450 billion in 2002, by a record $984 billion in 2003 and by $800 billion this year. Just the increase in the debt ceiling over the past three years is nearly 2 1/2 times the entire federal debt accumulated between 1776 and 1980.

"A recession, a sluggish economy and five tax cuts in four years — coupled with soaring defense spending on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and rising domestic spending — have turned record surpluses that Bush inherited into a record deficit of $413 billion in the past fiscal year."

"Last month, the government crashed into the debt ceiling, and the Treasury began borrowing from a civil service retirement fund."

"By passing such a huge increase in the debt limit, with no strings attached, Congress has effectively given the Bush administration a blank check to continue running large deficits, said Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley. "An open-ended license for this kind of fiscal irresponsibility is a recipe for disaster," he said."

Posted by: Likes2mtnbike at November 19, 2004 10:12 | link | comments