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| | The national debt and other staggering concerns
Friday, Dec 5, 2003 By Jack Moseley I'd like to talk to you about that $23,467 you owe. In addition to the compounded interest on that debt, of course, you can expect the total amount due from you, your spouse and each of your offspring to more than triple in the next 10 years. No, I'm not talking about your credit card debt. I'm referring to your share of the national debt that our federal government has borrowed to pay for everything from searches for bugs that once were thought to be extinct to health and hospital services for the people of Iraq. I mean the 6 trillion, 862 billion, 804 million, 928 thousand, 244 dollars and 39 cents we owed the last time I checked. As a single number, that's a staggering $6,862,804,928,244.29, but that's just for starters. With those wonderful tax cuts from President Bush and Congress, just about any Republican, Democratic or independent expert on our collective national debt agrees that here's what you can expect to happen in the next decade if George W, Bush is re-elected: This country will spend 25 percent more money than it collects every year for the next 10 years. A huge share of that will be in payments on our government's borrowed money. So on the national debt we already owe, the collective debt of every living American will increase by 250 percent, not counting the additional expense of compounded interest on the total debt each year. In other words, that $400 check some of us got from Uncle Sam, along with a reduction in out tax rates, will end up costing each of us something in excess of $65,000. Is this a wonderful country or what? (Heck, this may happen even if Bush is defeated. It's hard to stop an avalanche.) This is just the one of things I've found to worry about recently. For example, if we're going to spend so much money, why don't we spend more of it at home and on things that will put our millions of unemployed men and women back to work? That would make sense to me. But no, instead of authorizing a full five-year, $375 billion transportation program to build needed roads like I-49 through western Arkansas, Congress came up with a lame five-month extension of the underfunded, existing transportation law when it could have created 90,000 short-term jobs and 1.3 million long-term jobs. It's very doubtful much will change next spring when the five-month extension legislation expires. Members of Congress likely will be too busy protecting their own jobs in a contentious presidential election year. Another thing that bothers me these days - and I'm sick of hearing it - is that rebuilding Iraq is just like the rebuilding of Europe after World War II. That's pure manure any way you look at it. Iraq is not Europe, and George W. Bush is not Harry S. Truman. Truman was a dedicated foe of war profiteering. Today, American corporations that contributed more than $500,000 to Bush's election campaign in 2000 have been rewarded - oops, I mean awarded - more than $8 billion in contracts to rebuild Iraq with our money. There were no bids for these projects, of course. The Marshall Plan of the 1940s was administered by an agency independent of the White House to avoid even the appearance of political favoritism. The rebuilding of Iraq, however, remains firmly under White House control. Europe was rebuilt the way Europeans wanted it done, but in Iraq Americans have rejected one suggestion after another from the Iraqi Governing Council. For instance, when the telephone system collapsed, enterprising Iraqis started a cell phone system that was working well. The U.S. ordered it shut down. I'd better stop this right here. I'm depressing myself. Life, luck and -30. ------- Jack Moseley writes for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock. His e-mail address is jackmoseley33@hotmail.com. |
