In article <bqt1rm$2edt$1@pencil.math.missouri.edu>, President, USA Exile Govt.
says...

Forwarded with Compliments of Government of the USA in Exile (GUSAE): 
Free Americans Resisting the Fourth Reich on Behalf of All Species. 
NOTE:  Thanks to truthout.org for this.   --  kl, pp

Looting the Future
By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

Friday 05 December 2003

One thing you have to say about George W. Bush: he's got a great 
sense of humor. At a recent fund-raiser, according to The Associated 
Press, he described eliminating weapons of mass destruction from Iraq 
and ensuring the solvency of Medicare as some of his administration's 
accomplishments.

Then came the punch line: "I came to this office to solve problems 
and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations." He 
must have had them rolling in the aisles.

In the early months of the Bush administration, one often heard that 
"the grown-ups are back in charge." But if being a grown-up means 
planning for the future - in fact, if it means anything beyond 
marital fidelity - then this is the least grown-up administration in 
American history. It governs like there's no tomorrow.

Nothing in our national experience prepared us for the spectacle of a 
government launching a war, increasing farm subsidies and 
establishing an expensive new Medicare entitlement - and not only 
failing to come up with a plan to pay for all this spending in the 
face of budget deficits, but cutting taxes at the same time.

Recent good economic news doesn't change the verdict. These aren't 
temporary measures aimed at getting the economy back on its feet; 
they're permanent drains on the budget. Serious estimates show a 
long-term budget gap, even with a recovery, of at least 25 percent of 
federal spending. That is, the federal government - including 
Medicare, which Mr. Bush has given new responsibilities without new 
resources - is nowhere near solvent.

Then there's international trade policy. Here's how the steel story 
looks from Europe: the administration imposed an illegal tariff for 
domestic political reasons, then changed its mind when threatened 
with retaliatory tariffs focused on likely swing states. So the U.S. 
has squandered its credibility: it is now seen as a nation that 
honors promises only when it's politically convenient.

What really makes me wonder whether this republic can be saved, 
however, is the downward spiral in governance, the hijacking of 
public policy by private interests.

The new Medicare bill is a huge subsidy for drug and insurance 
companies, coupled with a small benefit for retirees. In comparison, 
the energy bill - which stalled last month, but will come back - has 
a sort of purity: it barely even pretends to be anything other than 
corporate welfare. Did you hear about the subsidy that will help 
Shreveport get its first Hooters restaurant?

And it's not just legislation: hardly a day goes by without an 
administrative decision that just happens to confer huge benefits on 
favored corporations, at the public's expense. For example, last 
month the Internal Revenue Service dropped its efforts to crack down 
on the synfuel tax break - a famously abused measure that was 
supposed to encourage the production of alternative fuels, but has 
ended up giving companies billions in tax credits for spraying coal 
with a bit of diesel oil. The I.R.S. denies charges by Bill Henck, 
one of its own lawyers, that it buckled under political pressure. 
Coincidentally, according to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Henck has 
suddenly found himself among the tiny minority of taxpayers facing an 
I.R.S. audit.

Awhile back, George Akerlof, the Nobel laureate in economics, 
described what's happening to public policy as "a form of looting." 
Some scoffed at the time, but now even publications like The 
Economist, which has consistently made excuses for the 
administration, are sounding the alarm.

To be fair, the looting is a partly bipartisan affair. More than a 
few Democrats threw their support behind the Medicare bill, the 
energy bill or both. But the Bush administration and the Republican 
leadership in Congress are leading the looting party. What are they 
thinking?

The prevailing theory among grown-up Republicans - yes, they still 
exist - seems to be that Mr. Bush is simply doing whatever it takes 
to win the next election. After that, he'll put the political 
operatives in their place, bring in the policy experts and finally 
get down to the business of running the country.

But I think they're in denial. Everything we know suggests that Mr. 
Bush's people have given as little thought to running America after 
the election as they gave to running Iraq after the fall of Baghdad. 
And they will have no idea what to do when things fall apart.

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