JASON LEOPOLD: LA Lawmakers Predicted An Apocalyptic End To New Orleans

[Tace]

By Jason Leopold -- World News Trust

Republicans like to brag that, as a political party, they are more fiscally responsible than their Democratic counterparts. Well, thanks to President Bush’s four years in office that theory can now take up residence in the urban legend department.

If anything, Bush’s tenure as president proves that the Republican tax cuts (which everyone knows truly benefit the wealthiest one percent) -- drastically slashing funds in the federal budget for much needed improvements to the country’s aging infrastructure (a perfect example being the outdated power grid), and trying to get away with launching wars on the cheap -- have cost taxpayers and their unborn grandchildren more money than anyone could have ever imagined.

Simply put, since he became president, Bush has not invested the funds to fix the cracks in the country’s façade, despite repeated warnings from experts and intense lobbying efforts by state officials that ignoring the problem will make it worse in the long run. Instead, the president pumped tens of billions of dollars into an unnecessary war that, when it became evident that attaining victory was tougher than the war planners imagined, required tens of billions of dollars more just to continue the fighting.

Only when devastation and catastrophe struck the nation did the federal government cough up the funds, but by then there wasn’t much of a choice, and as such a $1 billion restoration project before a devastating hurricane touched down in the Gulf Coast has turned into a $200 billion reconstruction effort and has now saddled taxpayers with economic woes that no tax cut can relieve.

http://worldnewstrust.org/modules/AMS/article.php?storyid=1059

[malaise]

1. The truth is there for everyone to see

Bushco will not escape this one no matter what happens from here on.

[Tace]

4. I Sure Hope Not

But it's hard to believe we've let it get this far. Chrs

[StClone]

2. Please do not lynch Grover Nordquist

He is an idiot and should be allowed the Insanity Plea. This is a lot of his ideology at play and his baby has proven to be a very ugly little demon, kinda like Papa Grover.

[whistle]

3. Republicans are more fiscally responsible? Look at the record

....Under Ronald Reagan, the national debt grew from $825 billion to $2.9 trillion, some 352% in eight years.

Then Pappy Bush, George Sr., caused that debt level to rise another $1.2 trillion to $4.1 trillion.

Under Bill Clinton the federal debt did rise for another five years to $5.2 trillion, but actually began to decline slightly in the last two years of the Clinto presidency.

Had Gore become President along with a democratic majority in the house and senate and continued the fiscally responsible policies of balanced federal budgets and sensible federal investments in sound economic programs for the United States, we may very well have reduced federal debt levels and stimulated economic growth, jobs, incomes, productivity, innovation, education to where the debt would have been all but eliminated.

Instead, under George W. Bush Jr (Dim Son) the federal debt is about to break through the $9 trillion mark and could well hit $13 trillion plus by the time Bush leaves office in Jan 2009.

The Bush/Republican legacy of fiscal irresponsibility will roar on perhaps for decades as the crushing interest rates on the federal debt will snowball. This year, the interest on the federal debt will be $361.25 billion (thru June 2006) and must all be borrowed, thus automatically causing the federal debt to increase, without any benefit whatever. However, the republican federal budget deficit spending on the war, disaster relief, and pork barrel projects which only enrich republican cronies will hit $800 billion pushing the federal debt even higher and at an accelerated rate.

Before the end of this calendar year, the debt ceiling will have to be reset to twice the level of when Bush took office in Jan 2001. That will be yet another blank check for republicans to go on spending and wasting the federal budget even more. The attacks will be on social security as Bush encourges the looting of social security to further the neo-conservative agenda of socialized government for the wealthy and by the wealthy.