Seniors with big prescription drug bills, health maintenance organizations awaiting lucrative new subsidies, upper-middle-class families anticipating a fat tax refund, and Iraqi cities expecting new schools or hospitals all have reason to be thankful about President Bush's extraordinary success at pushing his agenda through the Republican-controlled Congress this year.
There may be less celebration among the young people who will inherit the tab for these initiatives. Bush is funding every penny of every one of these goodies by increasing the national debt. Which is another way of saying that he's sticking the bill to the next generation.
The scale of the transfer is dizzying.
In just the last few months, Congress, at Bush's request, has doled out $87 billion to rebuild and secure Iraq and Afghanistan; approved a $401-billion defense appropriation bill, the largest ever; completed a $1-trillion tax cut on top of the $1.35-trillion reduction the president won in 2001; and approved a Medicare prescription drug benefit that will cost at least $400 billion over the next decade, probably more. If the energy bill is revived next year, add to the list at least another $26 billion in tax cuts for energy companies.
All of this, it's worth remembering, comes when the federal government already faces its largest deficit ever -- some $374 billion last year, $84 billion more than the previous record held by Bush's father, George H.W. Bush.
Several reliable analysts project the federal deficit will soar past $500 billion this year -- and then remain near that unprecedented level for the indefinite future, even if the economy recovers. It's an understatement to conclude, as the Goldman Sachs investment bank did in a recent report, that the budget process in Washington is "out of control."
Project this forward a few years and the fiscal strain on future taxpayers could become excruciating. By 2012, Bush's tax cuts would reduce federal revenue by almost $400 billion a year, according to calculations by Peter Orszag of the Brookings Institution.
Even without the new prescription drug benefit, the swelling number of seniors and the rising cost of care would push the annual bill for Medicare past $500 billion by then, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The drug subsidy for seniors would add at least another $65 billion to the tab. The CBO says that by 2012, defense spending would approach $600 billion annually -- a number other analysts say understates the price tag for Bush's long-term national security plans.
