Correct us if we’re wrong, but “conservatives” are running Congress and the White House, right? What is so conservative about this: Spending and spending and when the credit line runs out, taking it up another unaffordable notch. Congress has to raise the debt ceiling to the tune of about $800 billion by Thursday to avoid hitting its limit on borrowing money and defaulting on the government debt. This could have been done weeks ago, since we actually reached the $7.38 trillion debt ceiling in early October, but Reuters explains, “The Republican-led Congress avoided increasing the borrowing limit before the Nov. 2 election as leaders did not want to have the politically sensitive vote.”
And if you think we’re in deep debt doo-doo now, just wait for President Bush’s second term agenda to kick in: The Congressional Budget Office estimates that his proposed 2005 budget would nearly double our current debt to about $14.5 trillion by 2014. As the Progress Report points out today, this is a far cry from what Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union address: “Our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short term.” If only.
