(no subject)

[yesthattom]

At $8 trillion now, our National Debt – accumulated since 1776 – will have reached $10 trillion or so by the time President Bush leaves office. Of this, roughly $8 trillion will have been racked up under just three presidents: Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and George Bush.

In the fiscal year just ending this month, taxpayers will have paid roughly $350 billion in interest on the debt.

(from Andrew Tobia’s blog)

If we weren’t spending that money on interest, we could be spending it on Katrina relief, education, and a host of other things.

I remember in 1992 one of the Clinton/Bush debates has “real people” asking questions. One person asked Clinton why she should care about the national debt. Clinton’s eyes lit up and he gave this very touching, thoughtful explanation of how the national debt affects people directly. He said that because we’re paying all this interest on the national debt, there is less money to pay for schools, to repave the roads where you live, and so on.

At the time everyone just blathered about, “Oh look! A democrat pretending to care about the national debt!”

Then when he was president he changed the way we do taxes to be more fair AND eliminated the deficit. The first time a president had actually done something positive about the national debt in ages and it was a Democrat. The Republicans were furious and successfully distracted people by saying, “Oh, but we’ll be repaying the debt for years, there’s still debt to pay off even if we aren’t adding to it” and “oh, he lucked out because of the good economy” and “oh, it only passed by 1 vote”.

The first thing Bush did was undo the tax changes Clinton had made. Removing the fairness and expanding the debt. And the economy sucks while Haliburton gets richer.

Now I realize what an economic genius Clinton was. He had a compassionate tax plan that was more fair to more people and solved real economic problems.