Budget Deficit Will Rise Again

Front page story in today's New York Times:
Bush Aides Say Budget Deficit Will Rise Again, by Edmund L. Andrews

White House officials say the budget deficit will rise to $427 billion, according to the NYT report, "which includes part of an additional $80 billion that Mr. Bush requested mostly for Iraq.."

According to the Congressional Budget Office, if Pres. Bush is successful in persuading the Republican Congress to make tax cuts permanent, that will add an additional $2 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years. And the agency predicts the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will cost our country another $600 billion over the next ten years, *if* they taper off gradually.

Added to that, if the plans to partially privatize Social Security succeed, that will cost between $1 trillion and $2 trillion over the next two decades.

It is incredible that here in California, our former governor could have been removed from office for a deficit of a few billion dollars (only to be replaced by a governor who makes no headway in reducing the deficit), while nationally our Republican administration is running up deficits that will be in the trillions of dollars over the next few decades with little effort to stop this travesty.