Bush: The King of "Borrow and Spend"

Fiscal conservatives of all political stripes should be equally appalled by the Bush administration's latest spasm of fiscal recklessness. The New York Times summed it up about as succinctly as one could wish:

"Less than a day after President Bush implied that Senator John Kerry lacked "fiscal sanity," the Bush administration said on Thursday that the federal government had hit the debt ceiling set by Congress and would have to borrow from the civil service retirement system until after the elections."

Borrow from the civil service retirement system? Borrow from the pathetic little federal pension funds of postal workers and tired, toothless CIA operatives?

This will be the fourth time during Bush's tenure that he has bonked his "small government" forehead against the debt ceiling. This requires a certain stature, as the debt ceiling is currently set, following three previous increase requests in the past three years, at $7.4 trillion dollars. Bush has increased the national debt by $2.1 trillion dollars during his tenure. A lame duck Congress is expected to raise the ceiling yet again in November. Cracking open the civil service pension piggybank is just a stopgap.

Numbers like $7.4 trillion and $2.1 trillion are rather hard to picture. Too many zeros. It's like trying to count the atoms in a block of cheese.

Here's one way to look at it. The current population of the United States is, for simplicity's sake, about 300 million people. Since Bush took office, he has increased the national debt by, let's see... 2.1 trillion divided by 300 million. Lots of zeros. Hmm....

greenbacks: 2,100,000,000,000
_____________
people: 300,000,000

= $7,000 more debt per sentient biped in America

Another way to look at it is that $2.1 trillion is about 4% of the 2003 gross world product (purchasing power parity) of $51.48 trillion, according to the CIA. Another couple dozen Bush terms and the United States would owe more than the entire world, including the United States, generates in income.

Another way to look at it is that $2.1 trillion would buy a full four-year private university education for 184,840,519 beer-swilling, Ramen-crunching students.

It would also buy a 50 million dollar Van Gogh self-portrait for every single one of the 42,000 residents of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, assuming Vincent stashed a few extras away somewhere. Nice for the rumpus room.

In the same article, the Times reports the official federal budget deficit for the 2004 fiscal year was $413 billion. This is the largest budget deficit in American history.

Fiscal sanity? You're through the looking-glass, George, and there's a tea-party waiting for you.