Joe Scarborogh in a WSJ op-ed: Pork

[question everything]

Pork

By JOE SCARBOROUGH
September 23, 2004; Page A14

Ten years ago, Republican congressional candidates like me were running as Washington outsiders, promising to balance the budget and pay off the federal debt. We campaigned against the Imperial Congress and promised Americans that if we got elected, we would be different.

We lied.

The Congressional Budget Office has reported that the government is operating under a record $442 billion deficit this year and will be buried under $2.29 trillion in additional red ink over the next decade. That burden will be piled on top of the $7.4 trillion dollar debt we are carrying today and the trillions we will be hit with as baby boomers reach retirement age. Because of Washington, our parents face Social Security shortages and our children face the prospects of living in a bankrupt nation. And yet, neither George Bush nor John Kerry dare to address the deficit in a meaningful way.

Mr. Bush, like most Republicans these days, only pays lip service to smaller government and balanced budgets. He is, after all, a president who inherited a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $442 billion deficit. His apologists will claim that Sept. 11 caused an explosion in federal spending, but the truth is that this administration allowed spending to explode at all levels of government. The libertarian Cato Institute reported earlier this year that discretionary domestic spending exploded at rates only surpassed by another president from Texas, Lyndon Johnson.

(snip)

Say what you will about Mr. Clinton, but when faced with a similar economic crisis in 1993, he made the tough choice to raise taxes. Though I believe he should have cut federal spending instead, I give President Clinton credit for making a tough political choice. These days, if you want a tax cut you get it. If you want a trillion dollar drug entitlement program, you get it. If corporate welfare and farm subsidies are your thing, you're in luck. Want to push defense spending over $400 billion? Don't worry, be happy. Want to push through the biggest expansion of federal education spending ever? Consider it done.

(snip)

Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican congressman, is the host of MSNBC's "Scarborough Country" and author of "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day," just out from HarperCollins.

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109590523520625775,00.html

[Village Idiot]

1. Hey Joe....

kill anybody lately?

[zbdent]

2. Better check the font on that column

Sounds like someone might have written a column and claimed it was by JS . . .

[Beetwasher]

3. Removing Jaw From Floor...That's a Forgery, Right?

n/t