The Bankrupting of America By Deb Della Piana

[Demeter]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_deb_dell_080331_the_bankrupting_of_a.htm






...Whether the real deficit number is $9 trillion or $55 trillion, the economy is in dismal shape all the way around. As he has done with so many issues facing the American people during the past seven years, President Bush continues to minimize the situation. He touts the 52 months of uninterrupted job growth that his administration has delivered. The fact is that his job growth performance is anemic. Bush has created only 5.9 million jobs in seven years (or 72,000 jobs per month). By this time in his administration, Bill Clinton had created 20.2 million new jobs (or 246,600 per month) and he did it by investing in America. Our own Mr. Optimism is competing with his father for the worst record of job growth since the presidency of Herbert Hoover. He goes on insisting that his ineffectual economic stimulus package will take care of bolstering the sagging economy.



How did things get this bad?
How we got here is a bone of contention. Bush supporters say we can’t lay all of the economic woes at his feet. Some want to blame the sub-prime mortgage meltdown entirely. It is certainly one factor, but beware laying the blame here as some economists are tying Bush’s tax cuts to this folly. Yet, even if we take the position that the economy was slowing down when George Bush took office, his fiscal irresponsibility on a number of fronts has directly led to this economic meltdown. Furthermore, anyone who believes that the money we are funneling into Iraq and Afghanistan has nothing to do with the failing economy is out of touch. Prior to the Iraq invasion, President Bush went on national television and insisted that this war would be quick and inexpensive as wars go. We were going to be greeted by the Iraqi people as liberators. We’d be in and out. I still have the image in my mind of George Bush in airman get-up landing on the deck of a carrier and proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.” That was the furthest thing from the truth.



Today the endless war in Iraq is being waged at a price of $12.5 billion per month. When you add in the long-term bills as a result of the war, such as disability payments for veterans, it looks more like $25 billion per month. The total economic cost for the Iraq war through 2008 is estimated at $1.3 trillion. This war is not creating jobs for the American people. It is, however, creating tidy little profits for businesses like Halliburton, Blackwater USA (our own freelance mercenary army), and KBR (formerly Kellogg Brown & Root). To add insult to the economic injury, KBR, our leading Iraq contractor, avoids paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring employees through two Cayman Island shell companies. The Defense Department has known this since 2004 and approves because it means KBR can do the work more cheaply. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s worst fears about an out-of-control military-industrial complex are coming to fruition.



Simultaneous to waging this fiscal albatross, President Bush has handed out $2 trillion in tax relief over the past seven years, primarily to those who need it the least. This has never been done while the United States was at war. The revenue from the tax cuts should be going toward offsetting the war’s staggering costs. What is most disturbing of all is that this president does not include the total amount needed to fight the war in his yearly budgets. Instead, he routinely handles this as “emergency spending” which keeps it out of the normal budget channels. At the time of this writing, President Bush is about to ask the Congress for another $107 billion for the war. Where does this emergency money come from? We borrow it from China and other countries, compounding the size of the deficit. These deceptive practices, and Bush’s disastrous fiscal policies, are carried through in his $3.1 trillion budget for 2009.

BUT WAIT! IT GETS WORSE! SEE CONTINUATION AT LINK








Authors Website: http://sacredorderofthefishhead.blogspot.com

Authors Bio: Deb Della Piana is a corporate ex-patriot turned liberal political blogger. She lives in the great state of Massachusetts with her life partner, two children and three cats.

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[indepat]

1. Such small prices to pay for a 'puke president given the power to do whatever he likes be it illegal

or unconstitutional, be it inhumane or unconscionable, be it ruinous or destructive. :D

[cliss]

2. Here at the DU, we could see it coming.

The rest of the country is now waking up to the fact: we're broke.

Thax for posting.

[rudy23]

3. Why is anyone treating this man as if he's operating in the best interest of America?

He wants to be a hero to his class, and be the anti-FDR that shoveled all the poor into the mass graves we deserve. Why are people still treating him as if he wants what's best for America?