Remember when the Republicans used to crow about smaller government and more fiscal responsibility? And why are the Democrats not taking this opportunity to stand for a more responsible fiscal policy from our government? Read on:
As Congress rushes to conclude its 2003 session, Republican leaders are trying to garner votes for controversial legislation by loading the bills with billions of dollars in added costs that analysts said would expand the budget deficit for years to come. The year-end binge has alarmed analysts in Washington and on Wall Street, coming as it does after three years of presidential and congressional initiatives that have both substantially boosted government spending and shrunk its tax base.
“The U.S. budget is out of control,” the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. warned Friday in its weekly newsletter to clients.
In the final days of the congressional session, GOP leaders added billions of dollars to energy and Medicare bills to help persuade key factions to support the legislation. Overall, the energy bill would cost $33 billion and the Medicare bill $400 billion.
… “The only thing I can tell you is evidently the word ‘tomorrow’ no longer exists in the vocabulary of otherwise responsible members of Congress,” said Warren Rudman, a former New Hampshire Republican senator and long-standing budget hawk. “They are acting as if there is no tomorrow.”
Former Treasury secretary Robert E. Rubin said, “Our political system has simply lost its willingness to take the very difficult path of maintaining fiscal discipline.”
Some rank-and-file GOP lawmakers expressed concern that the burgeoning deficit is happening under the watch of the Republican Party, which came to power in Washington preaching fiscal restraint and less government.
… Bush’s $87 billion request for military operations and assistance for Iraq and Afghanistan was initially met with sticker shock and disbelief. Under pressure from constituents, the House and Senate passed versions that shaved the total slightly. But when the measure emerged from final negotiations, it had actually grown by $500 million.
… Goldman Sachs economists concluded last week that tax cuts and surging spending will push the deficit this year to half a trillion dollars, and “any thoughts of relief thereafter are a pipe dream until political priorities adjust.”
Even conservatives who support tax cuts have begun to note the imbalance. Government spending now totals $20,000 per household, a level not seen since World War II, said Brian Reidl, a federal budget analyst with the Heritage Foundation. Meanwhile, taxes total $17,000 per household.
“Conservatives are so afraid of losing their majority status right now that they feel a need to . . . pass the other side’s legislation to prove how moderate they are,” Reidl said. “But they’re showing an astonishing willingness to spend now and dump all the cost in our children’s laps, and an amazing unwillingness to reconcile the size of government with the amount of taxes needed to fund it.”
… Rudman puts the long-term costs of these commitments in dire terms: inevitable currency devaluations, massive tax increases, collapsing retirement accounts.
“It is puzzling, unless you take the most cynical political view of ‘I’ve got to do what I’ve got to do, and whatever bad that’s going to happen is not going to happen on my watch,’ ” he said, trying to explain lawmakers’ motivations. “If that is what’s happening, we are facing the Titanic of fiscal crises in eight to 10 years.”
