BUSH'S LEGACY TO AMERICA WILL BE EVEN WORSE THAN HIS DISASTROUS PRESIDENCY

It's taken Americans an inordinately long time to figure out that Bush and his vile regime, as well as his corrupt, greedy, selfish political party, define venality! No one in the world could believe we re-elected this arrogant, self-serving and incompetent gang in 2004. And even if you are aware that we didn't actually re-elect them-- since the evidence clearly shows they managed to steal the election in Ohio complements of Diebold and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell-- we did sit by like a nation of sheep will these rustlers were shearing us. But, as the country is experiencing a great re-awakening and starting to come to terms with what the Bush Regime is, we also have to face the fact that the shearing has hardly begun.

USA TODAY has a very ominous headline this morning A 'Fiscal Hurricane' on the Horizon-- Economists Say Unchecked Spending Will Trigger Recessions and Worse with a story by Richard Wolf. He starts with David Walker, the U.S. Comptroller General stating, bluntly that "We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede." Walker likens America today to Rome before the fall of the empire-- a complete lack of viable leadership, a financial condition is "worse than advertised," a "broken business model," with overwhelming budget deficits and a hellish balance of payments.

Bush's uncontrolled spending, coupled with the uncontrolled graft and corruption endemic to the Republican Party has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Does that should like I'm exaggerating? The USA TODAY article points out that budget watchers from all political points of view are warning of serious, even catastrophic, fiscal trouble looming. (Shame Bush doesn't read and it's a shame no one around him cares to give him bad news and it's a shame that the "Mayberry Machievellis" who make up his regime are short-thinking political hacks who only think in terms of partisanship and cheap politics.

Meanwhile, this is what we get (from the USA TODAY piece):
· Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, dispassionately arms 535 members of Congress with his agency's stark projections. Barring action, he admits to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in coming decades. That's when an aging population, health care inflation and advanced medical technology will create a perfect storm of spiraling costs.
· Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, sees a future of unfunded promises, trade imbalances, too few workers and too many retirees. She envisions a stock market dive, lost assets and a lower standard of living.
· Kent Conrad, a Democratic senator from North Dakota, points to the nation's $7.9 trillion debt, rising by about $600 billion a year. That, he notes, is before the baby boom retires. "We're not preparing for what we all know is to come," he says. "We're all sleepwalking through this period."
· Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation projects a period from now until 2050 in which tax revenue stays stable as a share of the economy but Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending soars. To avoid big tax increases, he says the government has to "renegotiate" the social contracts it made with its citizens. [Air America host, Johnny Wendell, blew a gasket while he and I were reading this paragraph. He's no fan of Butler or the fascist ass-wipes at the pernicious Heritage Foundation. "The endless pandering to dithering idiots that believe that one day they'll be driving golf balls with the Chimp's relatives has led to the bankruptcy of the Treasury by Die Partei Republikkkanische. Trickle down economics is the basis of upward redistribution of wealth and it relies on not taxing Die Partei's actual money base and enraging its foot soldier base when the payoff never comes-- the latter then blames immigrants, Blacks and liberals for their misery which keeps them voting Republikkkanischen. This impending economic meltdown might just end that vicious and insane cycle." You can certainly see why Johnny and I are friends.]
· Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill of the centrist Brookings Institution put their pessimism into a book titled Restoring Fiscal Sanity. Rivlin, who became the first director of the Congressional Budget Office in 1974, says it will take an "economic scare" such as the 1987 stock market crash to spur action. Sawhill likens the growing gulf between what the government spends and takes in to a "Category 6 fiscal hurricane."

Wolf writes of them as "the preachers of doom and gloom. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, they are trying to be heard above the ka-ching of the cash register as it tallies the cost of government benefits and tax cuts, Iraq and Hurricane Katrina." But Bush, like a really atrocious CEO-- and, believe me, as a former president of a company owned by a multinational corporation, I have seen more than my share of this particular brand of Republican jackass-- addresses only the nation's immediate, relatively piddling short-term budget deficits, leaving the gargantuan long-term problem for... Well, Bush's motto was always apres nous le deluge.

Here's part of the deluge (the fiscal part) Bush's years incompetence, upward redistribution if wealth and neglect are leaving us:

· Prescription-drug coverage under Medicare takes effect Jan. 1. Its projected cost, advertised at $400 billion over 10 years when it passed in 2003, has risen to at least $720 billion. "We couldn't afford" it, Walker says of the new law.
· The leading edge of the baby boom hits age 62 in 2008 and can take early retirement. The number of people covered by Social Security is expected to grow from 47 million today to 69 million in 2020. By 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects, Social Security spending as a share of the U.S. economy will rise by 40%.
· The bulk of Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax-cut program is set to expire at the end of 2010. But Congress is moving to make the reductions permanent. That would keep tax revenue at roughly 18% of the economy, where it's been for the past half-century — too low to support even current spending levels. "We can't afford to make all the tax cuts permanent," Walker says.
· Baby boomers begin to reach age 65 in 2011 and go on Medicare. Of all the nation's fiscal problems, this is by far the biggest. If it grows 1% faster than the economy — a conservative estimate — Medicare would cost $2.6 trillion in 2050, after adjusting for inflation. That's the size of the entire federal budget today.

And what does this mean for you and I? Well, much higher interest rates, nice for bond holders, bad for the rest of us; the long-time Republican goal of lower wages and destruction of collective bargaining; shrinking pensions ("shrinking," is a BushEnron euphemism for "disappeared;" slower-- or even negative-- economic growth; and, ultimately a much lower standard of living for non-millionaires. Add to this higher taxes for our children, less savings, plunging stock and bond prices and lots of deep recession... if not worse.

Walker, who went from being a conservative Democrat to a moderate Republican to an Independent
states flatly, in a statement reminiscent of Bush's father's pronouncement of right-wing trickle-down fiscal policy as "voodoo economics," that "Anybody who says you're going to grow your way out of this problem, would probably not pass math."

AOL is carrying the USA TODAY piece today. Along with it is a user's poll. They ask two questions. The first is "Are we heading for any of the following?"
All of the above 60%
Recession 14%
None of the above 12%
Pension meltdown 12%
Market crash 2%

And the second is "Will you rely on a pension during retirement?"
No 56%
Yes 44%


WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE ON THE BUSH ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE

After exhaustive research, the Economic Policy Institute has concluded, "By virtually every measure, the economy has performed worse in this business cycle than was typical of past ones, including that of the 1990s, which saw major tax increases."