Inattention to Deficits Disorder

The American Prospect recently said President Bush is suffering from a new malady called IDD - Inattention to Deficits Disorder.

Bush is going to request $1 billion over 5 years "to fund the start of a new American campaign in space intended to put a permanent base on the moon and land astronauts on Mars."
I think that is great. The only problem is that it is going to take a lot more money than that to accomplish those feats (hundreds of billions by some estimates) and Bush has put the nation in a position where it cannot afford to do these things. If this space campaign is to ever come to fruition, it is going to be up to some future administration to make it happen.

In the meantime, Bush is proposing to spend even more money ($1.5 billion) on a conservative campaign to "promote marriage" among low-income couples.

The International Monetary Fund has recently scolded the U.S. for its troubling debt warning that "the U.S. profligacy and its voracious appetite for credit will drive up interest rates around the world and threatens the global economic recovery."

"An economic slowdown and President George W. Bush's huge tax cuts conspired to swing the U.S. federal budget from a surplus of 2.5 percent of gross domestic product in 2000 to a deficit of about 4 percent in 2003. Add the states' own budget shortfalls and the country's trade deficit, the IMF report notes, and the United States faces an "unprecedented level of external debt for a large industrial country."

The Bush administration's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts are without a doubt the most fiscally irresponsible action by a U.S. president in our nation's history.