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Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Deficits, War and Trade-Offs
It is done: the deficit for FY2007 was $161 billion. Strangely, the President has yet to proclaim "mission accomplished" for "reducing" it from the inflated estimate he gave in his budget- $244 billion. Perhaps he isn't bragging because he didn't reduce it (or perhaps not).
If it wasn't for his many fiscally irresponsible policies, there'd be no deficit at all. Take for example, oh i don't know, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. $170 billion was appropriated for them last year. If it had been offset, there would be no deficit. And that's just one of the many fiscally reckless decisions made over the last 6 years.
Imagine a world where there is no deficit. Picture the budget balance, the debt reduction, the low low interest rates...well, having any trouble picturing it? That's because a great deal of that money wouldn't have been put towards deficit reduction. It likely would have been spent on social and economic programs. There's no guarantee, of course, but there's a pretty good chance, Congress being in different hands and all.
Folks, this war isn't just going to paid "by our children" and all that racket: we're paying for it now, in all the spending that just isn't happening. Money that could have been spent on opportunities, security and living standards for lower and middle income folks is being sunk on our foreign adventures and all its beneficiaries. War has opportunity costs.
One wonders if the Bush administration's fiscal incompetence wasn't so incompetent after all. After all, competence is only a measure of achieving goals, whatever they may be. If we assume its goal was to redistribute government finances, it performed rather competently.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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