Well, Bush is on the tube right now, lying as usual. He claimed that we have cut the budget deficit in half, 3 years ahead of schedule. Of course, from a logical standpoint, that is a pretty meaningless statement, and certainly nothing to celebrate. Regardless, it is pretty simple to cut the budget deficit in half, when you simply move a bunch of spending "off-budget". Moreover, a large part of that debt reduction, has come from increased borrowing from the social security trust fund.
The normal measure of the success of any enterprise, whether a business or a household, is to quantify how much overall debt has increased or decreased over a period of time. When calculating my household worth, I don't have the luxury of simply erasing credit card and loan interest payments, or counting money that I borrow against my retirement accounts as income. Certainly, no mortgage company would allow me to get away with that. In fact, I would be guilty of fraud if I used that kind of accounting on a loan application.
To determine the ACTUAL fiscal health of the federal government, we must hold the Bush administration and congress to the same standards the rest of the country must follow. In other words, determine how much the national debt has grown year over year. After all, it is money that all Americans are eventually going to have to pay back.
When you look at those bottom line numbers, the picture ain't so rosy. In fact, despite Bush's contention, last year's real budget deficit was actually 574 billion dollars, an increase of 18 billion over the previous year's deficit, and is 32 times what it was the year before Bush took office.
Source:
US Treasury Department - Bureau of the Public Debt
Year End | Total Debt | Yearly Increase | Percent |
9/29/2006 | 8,506,973,899,215.23 | 574,264,237,491.73 | 7.2% |
9/30/2005 | 7,932,709,661,723.50 | 553,656,965,393.18 | 7.5% |
9/30/2004 | 7,379,052,696,330.32 | 595,821,633,586.70 | 8.8% |
9/30/2003 | 6,783,231,062,743.62 | 554,995,097,146.46 | 8.9% |
9/30/2002 | 6,228,235,965,597.16 | 420,772,553,397.10 | 7.2% |
9/28/2001 | 5,807,463,412,200.06 | 133,285,202,313.20 | 2.3% |
9/28/2000 | 5,674,178,209,886.86 | 17,907,308,253.43 | 0.3% |
9/30/1999 | 5,656,270,901,633.43 | 130,077,892,735.81 | 2.4% |
9/30/1998 | 5,526,193,008,897.62 | 113,046,997,500.28 | 2.1% |
9/30/1997 | 5,413,146,011,397.34 |