Building The Budget Deficit (Editorial)

The Bush administration last month said the U.S. budget deficit will leap to a record $482 billion in fiscal 2009, which begins Oct. 1. And that doesn’t include about $80 billion in war costs.

That certainly can’t make either presidential candidate happy. Both Sen. Barack Obama for the Democrats and Sen. John McCain for the Republicans have confessed their lack of knowledge about the economy.

And President Bush’s policies will leave one of them a mess to deal with right off the bat. It will be tough enough to figure out how to jumpstart an economy that has been stumbling along and, as a result, bringing in lower tax revenue. Not to mention that the incoming president will face housing and mortgage lending problems that have hit the financial sector hard, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, rising energy prices, inflation – you name it.

Bush’s budget will leave Obama or McCain with little wiggle room to try to solve the multitude of problems the current president will leave behind. Obama and McCain have made campaign promises that will be impossible to keep. Obama wants to cut middle-class taxes and spend more on health care and education, and McCain wants to cut corporate and individual taxes and spend more to gain energy independence. The only options they’ll have will be to raise taxes, or at least allow current tax cuts to expire, or cut government spending. Try getting any such proposal through Congress.

Former President Bill Clinton left Bush with a budget surplus of $128 billion in 2001, but Bush has posted a budget deficit every year. Policies, some that pre-dated Bush, have sent the national debt soaring to more than $9.5 trillion, compared with $5.6 trillion when he took office in 2001. The national debt increases an average of $1.77 billion per day.

The $168 billion two-year stimulus package, backed by both Democrats and Republicans in Congress to prevent a recession, certainly added to the deficit. Congress, of course, must share the blame for the deficit with all its big spending programs.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the record budget deficit is “the price that we pay in order to help improve the economy.” Now, take that thinking to its logical conclusion.