Category: Politics

Political rants and information

Spending 2.6 Trillion Dollars

A brief story came across the AP newswire this afternoon detailing the differences in the ongoing U.S. budget discussions/debates currently happening in Washington. Essentially, there are three schools of thought as to who owns the purse strings – the President, the House, or the Senate. All three are in fairly close agreement with how to spend nearly $2.6 trillion this year alone, but, for the third year in a row, all three neglect addressing the incredible deficits that are being created in the process.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that if current laws and policies remained the same, the federal government would run budget deficits of $368 billion in 2005 and $295 billion in 2006. However, because of the statutory rules that govern such baseline projections, those estimates omit a significant amount of spending that will occur this year–and conceivably for some time in the future–for U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and for other efforts in the war on terrorism. And, those estimates are on top of the record $412 billion deficit set for 2004.

The following chart from the CBO shows the total revenues and outlays as a percentage of GDP from 1962 to 2015. Notice the pattern within the past three years, and how the budget gap doesn’t appear to be narrowing. When will the elected powers-that-be attend a simple finance course?

Total revenues and outlays as a percentage of GDP from 1962 to 2015

Phreakin’ Phil

Phil - Groundhog Day 2005 Curse you, Punxsutawney Phil! The “Prognosticator of Prognosticators” was rudely awoken this morning and, most likely out of spite, predicted six more weeks of winter. Granted, there are always six more weeks of winter from this point forward, but it’s fun to blame the cold and snow on something else. Especially if that something else is a marmot.

Tonight is the State of the Union speech by our beloved monkey president, which means that I’ll most likely catch the first twenty minutes and then tape the rest. In my opinion, the Daily Show with Jon Stewart coverage of the speech should be much more interesting than the speech itself. As a matter of fact, the Daily Show coverage of January’s inauguration speech was absolutely hysterical and served as a counterbalance to a speech that has been deemed a “vacuous … sermon” by Zbigniew Brzezinski from the PBS Newshour.

I’ll stop yapping now. I’m a Democrat who needs to mourn the loss and move on!

Before I forget, a new Red Sox Blog popped up today, and it happens to be a really good read. I recommend checking it out and taking a look at the photos that I (shameless plug) coincidentally took.

Analysis: Accountable, Not Held to Account

President Bush Silhouette The subject of this post is the title of an Associated Press article that hit the newswires today which examines why politicians are not always criticized when their original assumptions turn out to be wrong. It isn’t a new concept, but it is an interesting read nonetheless.

Politicians, by definition, are accountable. But they are not always held to account when their certitude is proved wrong.

The fuel for the discussion is – go figure – the fruitless search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. The White House issued a statement last Wednesday detailing that they were done looking for WMDs and that the search had turned up very little. President Bush commented that he “felt like we’d find weapons of mass destruction.” This is from the same man who said on March 17, 2003, that “intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that Iraq continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.” The very next day, President Bush, under false pretenses (expectations?), launched the military campaign in Iraq.

There has been a complete lack of credible criticism (I say “credible” because people like me blogging about it is more like whining than facilitating discussion) and an even greater lack of voters paying any attention to what happens in their own government. Why aren’t more people holding their elected representatives to account?

Photo credit: AFP/Paul J. Richards