[George W. Bush]

One reader stressed that the interest on our national debt this coming year will be a bigger expenditure than will be our national defense—a development that almost certainly will weaken our national defense.

I looked at the debt load recently and got this table from from the Bureau of the Public Debt:

Available Historical Data FISCAL Year End
2003	$318,148,529,151.51
2002	$332,536,958,599.42
2001	$359,507,635,242.41
2000	$361,997,734,302.36
1999	$353,511,471,722.87
1998	$363,823,722,920.26
1997	$355,795,834,214.66
1996	$343,955,076,695.15
1995	$332,413,555,030.62
1994	$296,277,764,246.26
1993	$292,502,219,484.25
1992	$292,361,073,070.74
1991	$286,021,921,181.04
1990	$264,852,544,615.90
1989	$240,863,231,535.71
1988	$214,145,028,847.73

In the first four months this year, we've already borrowed another $128 billion. On Februrary 5, we just passed $7 trillion of debt. The debt ceiling is at $7.4 trillion. And Bush is already pushing to get Congress to raise it another trillion to $8.3 trillion.

Supposedly, this raise of debt ceiling is to reform Social Security. But there is no such legislation on the table yet! Just the request to raise the debt limit. One must wonder if S.S. reform is the real reason to raise the debt limit or if this is just a big fake-out so the GOP can spend even more. And the bills will start coming due for the Pill Bill in 2006.

And we have idiots here at FR that think this growth of debt is meaningless.

If we were not in debt, we could double our defense department overnight.

I don't want a peace dividend. I want my debt dividend. Screwing off more than $300 billion a year because we won't put our financial house in order is pretty appalling.

Given that the Dims live to spend, what is the excuse for the supposed business party, the GOP, allowing these debts to grow and grow by funding the biggest spending since LBJ's Great Society programs and then passing the biggest new entitlement in 40 years? (And an entitlement that hasn't even bought the votes of seniors to boot!)

When you think about this stuff and see the sodomy marriages moving forward on all fronts, you wonder if Gore did win the 2000 election.

[OrthodoxPresbyterian]

When you think about this stuff and see the sodomy marriages moving forward on all fronts, you wonder if Gore did win the 2000 election.

Gore didn't win. You know that, GWB.

If Gore had won, the Kennedy Education Bill and the Farm Bill proposals would have been even more bloated with pork-barrel spending, and the $400 billion (oops, sorry, $530 Billion) Medicare Drug Bill would have instead been a $1 Trillion National Health Care Communization.

But, all that being said... if Gore had won, the GOP Congress wouldn't have passed these Bills at all.

This is not to say that Gore would have been a better President than GWB. He would not have been; GWB is clearly the "better man" between the two. However, it is to say (and I think this is bloody well obvious) that if Gore were President, the President would not receive the Spending expansions he desires.

FReepers can praise GWB to the skies, but the fact remains -- Federal Spending has exploded upwards because the GOP Congress has given Bush every Spending expansion he has asked for.

One may argue, if one treats all political questions as a horse-race, that this marginally accrues to Bush's advantage. One may argue, if one treats all political questions as a horse-race, that this marginally accrues to Republican Party advantage.

However, it is impossible to argue that any of this accrues to Citizen Taxpayer advantage.

It simply does not.