$7,782,816,546,352.29 -- Forget the Social Security "crisis."...

(Below are just some of the best paragraphs from this article, I encourage everyone to click the link below to read the rest of this great article, with these paragraphs in proper context)

From: The American Prospect - Online Edition
$7,782,816,546,352.29
Forget the Social Security "crisis." The number above is the crisis you should worry about.

By Terence Samuel
Web Exclusive: 04.08.05

This week, President George W. Bush went to the Bureau of Public Debt, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, to make the point that there is no Social Security trust fund -- nothing there that can be really counted on. All it is, he said, was a bunch of IOUs. Parkersburg is a river town near the Ohio border, where the Ohio and Little Kanawha Rivers meet, and it is something of an irony that the one presiding over the largest explosion in federal budget deficits would use the Bureau of Public Debt as a backdrop for his plea for solvency in Social Security...

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Without the budget resolution, those proposals face Democratic filibuster and will likely die. Regardless of how it is sliced and diced, we are looking at an annual deficit of $368 billion this year and a 10-year projected deficit on $1.35 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. And none of these numbers include the cost of the continuing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan...

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These days, there is nothing on the table worthy of the name “deficit reduction,” but there is growing concern. Conservative GOP budget hawks in the House -- embarrassed by the tarnish that the deficits puts on their reputation as the party of smaller, cheaper, more responsible government -- have been challenging their leadership to more aggressively address the deficit problem. The comptroller general of the General Accounting Office, David Walker, has been saying the solvency problem in Social Security is essentially a small stream headed for a much bigger river. So the problem is not just that Social Security may not be able to mail out monthly checks someday in the distant future but that, more perilously, the federal government may find itself so mired in debt that the whole economy just slowly grinds to a halt...

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...The day Bush was sworn into office in 2001, the national debt was $5.7 trillion, and there was a surplus. On the day he showed up in Parkersburg, it had climbed to $7,782,816,546,352.29. That is seven trillion, seven hundred and eighty-two billion, eight hundred and sixteen million, five hundred and forty-six thousand, three hundred and fifty-two dollars, and twenty-nine cents.

But it’s just an IOU.

(much more at link above)

Good Read.

drives country into ditch.

what else can one say. every possible thing he can do wrong, he does wrong and then some. JUST. LOOK. AT. THOSE. NUMBERS.

<sick to my stomach that it's come to this>

this, and it won't be easy, and he/she will probably be hated for addressing Bush's screwups.

...that way, they can say, "See, we told you the Democrats would raise your taxes!"

That's the main reason I hope the economy collapses very soon is, so they have to fix it themselves, or they get labeled as worst than H. Hoover.:evilfrown:

no kidding, they still say things like, "because the previous administration's policies didn't . . blah blah blah"

Bush could be president till 2020 and they'd still do it.

I love this quote from the Newsweek reporter,

Newsweek’s Robert Samuelson envisions it as an “and economic and political death spiral.”

:kick: