Deja View

Republicans are great revisionists. You know all of Clinton's economic success was really a result of Bush, Reagan, "the market" or the Republican Congress. I am sure that in the future, the GOP apologists will sugarcoat for and genuflect to the present administration, which is by all rational accounts and sane measures, a colossal failure.

So I think that for my own peace of mind, it is important that we who are living and gritting our teeth through the waning days of Bush II, set the facts straight for the future historical record.

When Bill Clinton left office at the end of his presidency, the country had a $559 billion dollar surplus. We now have a $400 billion dollar deficit.

Bill Clinton left the economy with a net gain of 22 million jobs. Bush can take credit for about 5 million, unless we have a major implosion at the end of his term.

I have been researching national debt and deficit and the sad truth is that no Republican administration since World War II has ever reduced federal spending. The last time a Republican Congress reduced spending was in 1946 under Truman.

By the way the National Debt, as of this morning, was $9,521,068,419,409.67. The budget is 3.1 trillion dollars, not accounting war funding and black operations which tend to get funded through emergency expenditures.

This administration cut taxes and raised spending so dramatically that it is no wonder that we are perched on the precipice of disaster. We have doubled the U.S. debt as it relates to GDP. Remember what they said when people cautioned that it was foolish to give the surplus back to the taxpayers? Balderdash, it's the people's money. Give them a tax cut. We are now facing our desserts. The supply sider's mantra has now unequivocally been proven to be bullshit - hopefully I won't have to read another one of Jack Kemp's editorial broadsides again.

The GOP is still pissed off about Roosevelt, woman's suffrage and the abolition of child labor. Yet they have been proven over and over again to be the biggest spenders of all, like drunken Shriners cavorting around at a hooker's convention in Las Vegas.
When Lawrence Lindsay suggested at the start of the Iraq war that the cost would be $100 to $200 billion dollars, he was chastised and demoted. The administration pegged the cost at 50 to 60 billion. Well guess what, we are now approaching $500 billion.

I guess that Osama has won the war, after all. We have bled our economy dry in Iraq and Afghanistan, with more terrorists alive today than there have ever been, all newly rekindled to fight Allah's battle against the great Satan. Bush, who came into office criticizing Clinton for his attempt at nation building in the Balkans, has become the greatest proponent of nation building in history.

Gas prices are now in the mid four buck range. I believe that gas was about $1.90 when Clinton left office. The oil companies are making money hand over fist with record profits, are sitting on 68 million acres of untapped leases, but are crying out for more land to plunder. The administration has turned a deaf ear to alternate fuels for the last eight years, with energy policy being tightly scripted by the producers. Republicans have consistently fought against higher mileage standards for Detroit over the last 30 years, in fact we have had a net decline. We are still wildly grabbing for the fossil fuel teat, with a reserve that can not last the next 50 years, while renewable sources of energy are scoffed at and left undeveloped. If sunlight or wind power was taxable and could be sold through the oil companies present distribution networks, you better believe that we would have current energy solutions.

The GOP chides the slim majority "do nothing" democratic congress but has been totally obstructionist, shutting down over 50 prospective energy bills in the house during the last term. The President has run to the far right of his party, can not forsake partisanship and squandered any hope for bipartisan coalition.

Today I read that Texas is going to start bible study in the high schools. The demarcation lines for the culture wars are clearly drawn in the sand. The Red Cross and Planned Parenthood have been ostracized because they advocate family planning. Multiculturalism is the enemy, never mind the fact that big business is chafing over the lack of cheap labor.


Let us pray that our next leader, whoever he may be, can run a government for all Americans. Let us not forget the morass we are in today, in the hopes of not making the same mistakes in the future. But if a democrat, once again, rights our economic ship, don't be surprised to see a bunch of puffed up conservatives taking credit for everything.