AND THE ECONOMY
On May 6th, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the budget deficit outlook was improving. Because of higher expectations in tax receipts, the CBO claimed that its latest monthly budget review showed the deficit would be less than the $477 billion previously expected.
On May 12th, the U.S. Treasury published its Monthly Report for April, 2004, covering receipts and expenditures for the month.
April 15th is supposed to be a day of great celebration for the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, a day when windfall bonuses from income taxes should flow into their hoppers in greater numbers than they do throughout the rest of the year.
But look what's been happening on April 15th. Unlike politicians, the figures don't lie.
By now, you should all know what's happening here – unemployment, outsourcing, companies moving overseas to boost their profits with cheaper labor, and people taking lower paying jobs just to survive. All while the spinmeisters tell you things are looking up.
We've even got thousands of people taking jobs with Halliburton and ready to go to Iraq because it's work and the pay is good.
On top of that we've got retailers like Wal-Mart providing their employees benefits in the form of literature and instructions on how to draw welfare. A situation that has many communities claiming that whatever people save at Wal-Mart is forfeited in higher taxes to support commity services. And these retailers are so successful they run local independents and other chains out of business. Cheap is no longer the foothold of the incompetent.
While we are giving up the quality of the products we buy and the quality of our lives, do you think the federal government is suffering? In the face of declining revenue, they plan bigger and bigger annual budgets. Even when they know revenues will be down, they think nothing of running deficits in the hundreds of billions.
The federal government has only two sources of revenue – taxes and borrowing. When taxes are down they just borrow more and more money tacking it onto the national debt for our children and grandchildren to pay someday.
Last year we ran up a $555 billion increase to the national debt. This year we're heading for a $700 billion record increase. And that includes the money the Beltway Bandits borrow/steal from our surplus payroll and other entitlement taxes that are supposed to go towards Social Security, health care, road repair, and so forth. The amount of national debt increase is the real deficit, not the lower figure they always try to pawn off on us.
Can anyone tell me why Donald Rumsfeld is going to Congress to ask for a $25 billion increase to his already exorbitant $415 billion budget? Why would he bother when the Bush administration is borrowing that much every two weeks or less? Does he expect Congress to take it out of the limited budget they have for domestic services like agriculture, education, and other elements of their ever decreasing discretionary spending?
The last time he went to Congress it was to ask for $87 billion and after a short bit of bickering Congress caved in on that one. By the way, we still don't have an answer to what happened to the $88.6 billion "Unconditional Gift Fund" that disappeared from the State Department in 2003. Can you say "coalition of the willing?"
Wouldn't you like to know what this invasion, occupation, and reconstruction is really costing us? Personally, I would also like to know the salaries of the media people who helped promote this war. If Katie Curric makes $14 million a year, what do you suppose Wolf Blitzer, Bill O'Riley, and the rest of them are getting to read monitors?