Friday, January 31, 2003
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If
President George W. Bush’s goal is to create an even more monstrous
deficit that the United States will never get out of, he’s
on the right track. On
Tuesday, at the beginning of his State of the Union address, Bush
clearly stated, “we will not pass along our problems to other
Congresses, other presidents and other generations.” Well,
if future generations are not going to be paying the bills, it looks
like the responsibility will somehow fall to this generation, because
Bush seems to be on a spending spree. In
his speech, Bush proposed an immense increase in government spending,
only to be overshadowed by the threat of his projected tax cuts
and the unwanted, but almost inevitable, war with Iraq. The
aim of Bush’s proposed programs, both big and small, seems
to be to cast the president in a very compassionate light. In addition
to a $400 billion overhaul of Medicare over the next 10 years, he
also proposed several more billions of dollars for mentoring programs,
addiction treatment, AIDS relief in Africa and the Caribbean and
research funding so the United States can lead the field in hydrogen-powered
cars. At
the same time, he wants tax reductions that would make the tax cuts
enacted in 2001 permanent and end the double taxation of dividends. “A
family of four with an income of $40,000 would see their federal
income taxes fall from $1,178 to $45 (a) year,” Bush said.
Though Bush has not yet dragged the nation into war with Iraq, the underlying message of his patriotic prose was that we are more than ready to pick a fight. What in the world could be going through the president’s head for him to think that he can meet such massive expenditures by proposing an equally alarming reduction in federal taxes? |
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TCU Daily Skiff © 2003 |
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