“FLAT FALSE”….The head of the nonpartisan General Accounting Office is speaking out:
Comptroller General David M. Walker on Monday disputed as “flat false” President Bush’s forecast that economic growth spurred by tax cuts will help shrink the federal government’s annual deficits.
….”The idea that this is manageable or that we are going to grow our way out of the problem is just flat false,” Walker said. “Even if we repeal all the tax cuts, you are still going to have to make tough choices.”
You know, we can quarrel about the war and foreign policy and all that, but that stuff is at least arguable. After all, despite a lot of pretty confident rhetoric on both sides, none of us really knows for sure the best way to fight terrorism and help bring the Arab world into the 21st century.
But as Walker says, Bush’s economic policies are as flatly wrong as it’s possible for an economic policy to be. Outside of the administration, there are virtually no serious economists left who are willing to defend them.
But the tax cut jihad continues, with disaster looming ever closer with every year we close our eyes and pretend that this can keep up forever. I’ve had friends before who were so incapable of rational thought that they figured they could keep running up credit card debt forever and somehow it would never catch up. That produced tragedies on a personal level, but the thing is, I never thought someone that detached from reality would ever be running the country.
It’s scary.
