More of the same

The administration warns this year's deficit is pretty much like last year's: ginormous...

In its budget proposal to be released on Monday, the White House predicts a record $1.6 trillion budget deficit for the fiscal year that ends September 30, the Capitol Hill source said.

According to the estimate, deficits will narrow to $700 billion by fiscal 2013 before gradually rising back to $1.0 trillion by the end of the decade, the source said.

Ever notice how Presidents commit to reducing the deficit by the year following the next election? Such procrastination has added up. Literally.

The estimate for the current fiscal year is significantly higher than the $1.35 trillion figure forecast by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office last week.

...which is significant, since the CBO usually issues the more pessimistic estimate...

Despite the difference, both estimates indicate that the deficit will continue to hover at a level not seen since World War Two, when measured as a percentage of the economy. Last year the government posted a $1.4 trillion deficit.

Chew on that a moment. First the economy, in nominal (i.e. non-inflation adjusted) dollars, is SIXTY-SEVEN times what it was in 1944. Granted, a dollar today doesn't go nearly as far. But even given the 'surge' in Afghanistan and ongoing operations elsewhere, it's hard to fathom how we're running as much red ink now as we were when we were launching hundreds of warships, building thousands of planes, and fielding an army of six million. Where is the money going?

Corruption and pork spending aside (and there's plenty of both), it's going to things Americans didn't use to expect from their government. Social Security, sold as a Depression program to help the aged and widowed, rapidly morphed into much, much more. By the 1960's "Great Society" push, the country became used to money from Uncle Sam for various core functions of life previously thought to be the responsibility of the individual. Instead of checks and balances, we asked for more checks and ignored the balances... which grew ever-larger on the debt side of the ledger.

So now we're spending like a wartime economy, but we don't seem to be defeating any of our enemies, whether it's Poverty, Crime, Drug Abuse or Al Qada. But those objectives were never really the point. They were the means to an end, since "war is the health of the State."

There is little difference between a 'wartime economy' and a 'command economy.' And since the President clearly considers even college football to be a fit subject for D.C.'s oversight, I'm not sure what else you could call the United State at this point (and no, that's not a typo).

Meanwhile, Lech Walesa appears to be having a case of deja vu... something we'd do well to note.