Op Ed: From huge surplus to huge deficit

[DesEtoiles]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/opinion/12745891.htm

From huge surplus to huge deficit

BY RICHARD COHEN
[e-mail]
On Aug. 3, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a message to Congress in which he said that the United States could not continue to fight a war in Vietnam and at the same time continue his Great Society programs without, among other things, raising taxes. President Bush ought to read that message. It was titled ``The Hard and Inescapable Facts.''

For Bush, facts are neither hard nor inescapable. He believes in ''magical math'' -- a firm understanding that somehow, in some way, something will happen to make everything come out right in the end. This is the economics practiced by the dreamy who think that today's credit-card purchase will never come due. This, in a nutshell, is the financial blueprint for the United States of America.

...


Borrowing begets inflation

The curse of Texas is once again upon the land -- an elective war, important enough to fight, not important enough to pay for. Up to now, it's been manageable if only because few have been asked to sacrifice anything for the grand cause of . . . well, it's hard to say, isn't it? On a national scale, the casualty rate is bearable, and the financial cost has not been felt because the money was first looted from the surplus and then borrowed.

But that borrowing will drive up interest rates, including mortgages, and it might, as happened with Vietnam, trigger inflation that lasted longer than the war itself. Everything is going to get more expensive and voters are going to get more grumpy -- and it's all going to look like it once did to LBJ. That's not someone's nightmare scenario. That's ``the hard and inescapable facts.''

©2005 Washington Post Writers Group

[BlueEyedSon]

1. He believes in ''magical math''.

No, he doesnt do ANY MATH, PERIOD.

[opihimoimoi]

3. Dat boy don even read much less add

[SpiralHawk]

5. Voodoo Economics

Straight out of the Skull & Boner Krypt

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. What's so maddening is that it was Fuckstick who kept saying "Fuzzy Math!"

during the 2000 campaign.

And even more maddening than that is that so many Americans, when the truth was so clearly evident that Fuckstick couldn't even do the math to keep his companyies afloat, believed the stupid fuck!

[CAG]

4. Don't bother me with all that common sense, factual mumbo-jumbo...

I'm too busy putting more gas into my 13 mpg SUV and writing a check for my minimum $10 payment on my $20,000-balance visa.

signed,
ignorance is bliss republican

[Bernardo de La Paz]

6. It's Republican strategy: run up debt, get Democrats to pay it.