Deficit

"The 109th Congress took our already large projected budget deficits and passed legislation that will make them larger. The legislation increased projected deficits from 2005 (the year the Congress convened) through 2011 (when the current five-year budget window ends) by a total of $452 billion. Moreover, the budget deterioration over the past six fiscal years -- 2000 to 2006 -- is the largest deterioration for any six-year period in the past half-century." [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities]

If this were a business venture in the private sector, such as a corporation or even a foundation, wouldn't bankruptcy be looming and wouldn’t the perpetrators, or at least the principals, be under investigation, if not indictment, right now for cooking the books, if not other criminal lapses? Would you say the fiduciary fecklessness here appears to be so overwhelming as to threaten national security on a scale tantamount to sabotage in it’s most venal form — subverting the fiscal foundations of our cherished capitalism? Or would that just be too fantastic even for an American citizen to contemplate?

If nothing else is clear, the burdens of interest and taxes continue to trickle down, as it were, ever more soddenly from the wealthy to the middle class, not to mention those even less fortunate, whose personal costs for health care, higher education, and retirement continue to swell like a flood in New Orleans. This reckless economics of extravagance is perpetrated by profligate politicians with little if any fear of foreclosure. And which other countries do you think hold the notes? In the end, it's as though this country is stuck in some prepubescent Rough Rider time warp, and the victims remain in a hapless state of suspended imagination.