That recent polls have indicated that the country is not moving in the right direction, that this is the most dissatisfied that Americans have been in many years, is encouraging: this country is not moving in the right direction. Even the most cursory glimpses at our faltering economy and our overseas debacles lend credence to the suspicion that Americans have much to be dissatisfied with. If, as conventional wisdom asserts, Democratic Administrations tax and spend, whilst Republican Administrations cut taxes and save, the events of recent years have certainly shuffled up these wrongheaded assessments. The Bush Administration, in a flourish of tax cuts and go-it-alone foreign policy, have ballooned the deficit to spectacular proportions. The bygone days of the Clinton-Gore era left a legacy of budget surpluses and strengthening domestic programs that has been squandered. The new Republican right, drunk on righteousness and faith-based initiatives, has shown itself content to cut taxes while spending exorbitantly, thereby casting everyday Americans into a vortex of fiscal disaster. And everyday Americans, thankfully, have caught on.
The latest report from the Congressional Budget Office indicates that the deficit will total more than $1 trillion more than expected over the next ten years; the total predicted deficit, $2.4 trillion, has given noted New York Times columnist Thomas L. Freidman cause to refer to the Bush team's fiscal policy as "Budgets of Mass Destruction". Tax cuts, Freidman observes, require spending cuts if they are to work, particularly in the long term. The Bush tax cuts are not tax cuts, but "tax deferrals"; these deficits will be absorbed by the American population eventually, and that will invariably mean more taxes down the road.
In the short term, budget deficits projected for 2004 just two years ago anticipated that Americans would be in the red by $14 billion (Krugman). The budget deficit pr...