Ol' Deficit Hawk George Does It Again

Today, January 28, 2010, the United States Senate took up the amendment to impose pay- as-you-go requirements on the United States Congress. This requirement, known as PAYGO, was credited by President Obama with helping achieve balanced budgets in Wednesday's State of the Union speech.

It works like this: If you are a Representative or a Senator and you want to propose a new Federal program, you have to come up the way to pay for the program. If you want to propose tax cuts, then you have to come up with spending cuts to balance out the tax cuts. Sounds simple, right? I mean if you were a deficit hawk, which is how George Voinovich describes himself, then you should love this idea.

Except, of course, George, along with the other 39 Republicans voted "Nay." Now why would they do that? Well, here's the situation they are in: They want to propose more and more tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, but they don't want to cut Federal programs to pay for the tax-cuts. Instead they want to keep running up the Federal deficit.

So once again, we see, just like we saw in 2001 and in 2003 with Bush's reckless tax cuts for the rich, which Ol' Deficit Hawk supported, that George Voinovich's claims to want a balanced budget are just so much Deficit Hawk bird poo.

Iraq Runs 79 Billion Dollar Surplus While USA Runs Record Deficit

Are we the only ones who find this rather bizarre? While the USA under Bush is running a record-setting deficit this year, the Iraqi government is set to run a 79 billion dollar surplus. Of course one reason why they are running this surplus is that we are paying for a significant amount of their reconstruction.

At the start of the run-up to the Iraq War, Colin Powell was reported to have told Bush that "Pottery Barn rules will apply. If you break it, you pay for it." So, on the one hand, if you invade a country under false premises, remove its government, and, in the process destroy a lot of its infrastructure, then maybe you should pay for its reconstruction. On the other hand, its their country, so shouldn't the Iraqis use some of their oil money to pay for part of their own country's reconstruction? Just one more example of how hard-working Americans are having their tax money hi-jacked by this Republican administration.

Iraq War Cost Keeps Going Up and Up

There is a new report out by the Congressional Budget Office that shows that the cost of the Iraq War rose sharply in 2007. This is from the Reuters article:
War funding, which averaged about $93 billion a year from 2003 through 2005, rose to $120 billion in 2006 and $171 billion in 2007 and President George W. Bush has asked for $193 billion in 2008, the nonpartisan office wrote.

The cost of this war is not being borne by Americans in the form of tax increases or cutbacks in government spending. Bush and his Republican allies in Congress have ruled out tax increases. It is being financed by borrowing and passing the cost on to future generations of taxpayers. When George W. Bush took office, the country was running a surplus, now it is running a deficit projected this year to reach 250 billion dollars.

Meanswhile the Federal Debt has gone from around four trillion dollars to over 9 trillion dollars. A lot of this is owned by foreign entities which are controlled by foreign governments, like the Chinese.

None of this seems to worry "Bubble-Boy" and his Republican allies since they think that they won't pay any political price for supporting these idiotic policies. Let's try to disabuse them of this notion in November.