A catastrophe of debt

[Nightwing]

Hurricane Rita by now has expended her fury over the Sabine River Valley, adding yet-untallied destruction in east coastal Texas to the devastation wrought along the Gulf Coast four weeks ago by her sister, Katrina. As the millions of Texans who fled the latest storm return home to count their individual losses, the price tag for the federal share of this latest weather catastrophe surely will grow by tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

Add that to the $63 billion already pledged to restore basic infrastructure to those portions of Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana - a land area larger than Great Britain - laid waste by wind and water, and the tens, if not hundreds, of billions of federal tax dollars that essential reconstruction in both regions eventually will devour, and the cost of these monster storms may well approach $200 billion or more.

And that emphasizes the question that sober minds in Washington already are raising:

How are we to pay for this?

How does a nation with a $331 billion budget deficit, a debt of more than $7 trillion and a president with a penchant for tax cuts fulfill these unbudgeted, unfinanced commitments?

President George W. Bush, whose self-professed compassionate conservatism has led him to become the biggest spender in that office since his Lone Star predecessor, Lyndon B. Johnson, brushes off that question with a nonanswer: "Well, it's going to cost whatever it costs." His Office of Management and Budget points out that it has put forward $200 billion in budget trims over the next 10 years that Congress has yet to act on

More at http://www.cleveland.com/editorials/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/opinion/1127640865199560.xml&coll=2

[Ganja Ninja]

1. "Well, it's going to cost whatever it costs."

Spoken like a spoiled little rich kid that's never had to worry about money in his life.

[papau]

2. The Bush legacy is the ONE TRILLION OF DEBT OWNED BY CHINA

We now are controlled by China thanks to Bush (1 trillion is the estimate that China will own at the end of the Bush term).

We dare not challenge too strongly our China Master's wishes since the low interest rates will go away the moment we do so.

Remember how the GOP yelled about the Clinton China weakness? Now that the GOP deficits have sold us down the river to China, I wonder what CATO and American Enterprise and Hoover will be saying - and our media says? - as if our media could think or wanted to - as they obey and praise Bush.