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12/03/08
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October
14, 2004 • George W. Bush has run up the national debt more than a trillion dollars in less than a year and a half. On Friday, May 23, 2003, Congress raised the national debt limit from $6.4 trillion to $7.384 trillion. On Tuesday, May 27th, after the Memorial Day weekend, President Bush signed off on the new debt limit. Anyone with an Internet connection can go to the U.S. Treasury's pages to see where the national debt stands today. • Bush ran up the national debt $596 billion in fiscal 2004 alone – the real deficit and a historic record because it includes money stolen from Social Security and other entitlement overpayments/surpluses. • Surpluses are not gone. Senator Kerry is also a member of the Senate sub-committee on Social Security. Therefore, he knows that the government has taken $94.5 billion in fiscal 2000, $98.7 billion in 2001, $88.6 billion in 2002, $82 billion in 2003 and $83 billion in fiscal 2004 from Social Security and spent that money elsewhere. (see chart) • The Social Security trust fund (the combination of the Federal Old Age & Survivors Insurance and the Federal Disability trust funds) now stands at $1.630 trillion – 22.2 percent of the national debt. Debt is debt folks, and it can only be paid off with taxpayer money. How did a trust fund ever become so much of the national debt? • At any time, and if he truly wanted to put immediate money into the economy, President Bush could have cut payroll taxes and eliminated the theft of a sizable portion of every worker's retirement payments. A crime that makes Enron and private sector crooks look like pikers. Of course, he would have just borrowed more money to make up for it. • Eight million Americans cannot find jobs. More than six million of these people are recent graduates that have never been counted in labor statistics and therefore are not counted as people who "lost jobs." The Census Bureau estimates our current population at 294 million. In 2000, when the last census was taken, we had a population of 276 million and 141 million people employed. Today, we should have 146 million workers just to keep up with the population increase and we've actually got 138 million workers. We are eight million short of where we should be. • We've got a balance of trade that's completely out of whack by more than a half trillion and the majority of things we do export, besides jobs, are probably weapons of mass destruction. Hundreds of economists have written an "Open Letter" to President Bush which opens with the following statement: "As professors of economics and business, we are concerned that U.S. economic policy has taken a dangerous turn under your stewardship. Nearly every major economic indicator has deteriorated since you took office in January 2001. Real GDP growth during your term is the lowest of any presidential term in recent memory. Total non-farm employment has contracted and the unemployment rate has increased. Bankruptcies are up sharply, as is our dependence on foreign capital to finance an exploding current account deficit. All three major stock indexes are lower now than at the time of your inauguration. The percentage of Americans in poverty has increased, real median income has declined, and income inequality has grown." Can hundreds of economists be wrong? Visit Ed Henry's own web site! Send a message to your elected representatives. Click here to start. Be sure to send a copy to Ed Henry.
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Posse Comitatus - Do You Think You're Safe? We'll Meet Again; Don't Know Where, Don't Know When Double Taxation Continues Unabated The Stall Begins On The Debt Limit Trust Gramps And Ignore The Polls- Thanks George, For $917 Billion In New Debt! Anyone But Bush -- And That's What We Got, Anyone MSN - Money Perpetuating The Myth Prescription Drugs From Other Countries Booga-Booga From Greenspeak -- Again Cagney Factor - Misplaced Hero Worship Choosing The Lesser Of Two Evils Four More Reasons To Vote For Bush Complete Archives for Ed Henry | ||||||||||||||
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