A Legacy of Red Ink

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, February 5, 2008;

President Bush used to say it all the time: "The job of the President is to confront problems, not to pass them on to future Presidents and future generations."

But his legacy will be precisely the opposite. He will have created problems that he then passed on to his successors unresolved.

Exhibit A is, of course, Iraq. But Exhibit B may well be the budget.

This morning's editorial pages tell the story well. The Washington Post editorial board writes: "Seven long years ago, . . . George W. Bush grappled with the supposed challenge of dealing with a projected surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next decade. The president proposed to pay down the debt by $2 trillion during that time, which, he said, was as much as could be responsibly redeemed. . . .

(snip)

Abramowitz and Weisman go over some numbers: "[W]hile the deficit measured against the size of the economy will be far from a record, it will come after six straight years of red ink. The federal debt will have climbed to $9.7 trillion by the time Bush leaves office, a rise of $4 trillion during his administration, according to the budget.

"Interest on the debt next year will total $260 billion, about what will be spent by the departments of Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, and Justice combined. . . .

"To reach his deficit forecast, the president assumes economic growth this year of 2.7 percent, a full percentage point higher than the Congressional Budget Office estimate and much higher than the forecasts of some private economists, who believe the nation may already be in a recession."

(snip)

Two Views of History

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (D-S.C.) said in a statement yesterday: "The President took office with an advantage that no president in recent history has enjoyed -- a budget in surplus, $236 billion in surplus in fiscal year 2000. . . .

"Democrats warned the President not to bet the budget on a blue-sky forecast of the economy. He spurned our advice, and in effect, told the country that we could have guns, butter, and tax cuts too -- and never mind the deficits. By the year 2004, the surplus was gone, vanished, and replaced by a deficit of $413 billion, the largest in American history in nominal terms.

"Ever since turning record surpluses to record deficits, the Administration has assured us that good news was just around the corner; but we have turned the corner, and the news is not good at all. The five largest deficits in American history (2004, 2008, 2009, 2003, and 2005) all have occurred under this Administration's policies. When the President took office, the national debt stood at $5.7 trillion; today it is $9.2 trillion and rising, projected to increase to $9.7 trillion by the time this Administration leaves office, up by $4 trillion in eight years. This is the legacy our children and grandchildren will inherit from the fiscal policy of this Administration. . . ."

(Continued here.)