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Originally Posted by spanky part 2
As for your simple ideas on Bush ruining the country. What else are you gonna call it. He has presided over the largest negative turnaround in our countries history and is making Reagans budget deficit look like a surplus...
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I believe that the people pulling Bush's strings make him the most dangerous president this country has ever had, but disinformation doesn't serve anyone.
The reality is that the Congressional Budget Office forecast the deficit for the current year will be down $81 billion from last year to $331 billion. Horrendous as that number is, it represents 2.7% of our Gross Domestic Product, less than half the level in 1983 when Reagan was in office. If the forecast for next year proves correct, the deficit will be 2.4% of GDP which compares far better with the average of 1.6% since WW2 than the headlines would ever have you believe.
The fragility of our economy has much less to do with hard numbers, some of which - productivity and growth in particular - are actually very good, than with its vulnerability to factors we cannot control. There is globalization which has a direct effect on (real) employment levels and wages; we have heard the President admit that we can do little about rising oil prices; and it is slowly seeping into our consciousness that the growth of China as an economic force is unlikely to be good news.
The biggest problem any occupant of the White House faces today is how to persuade a dumbed-down public to start to think about these other issues and how to deal with them. Bush and the Republicans have a particular problem in that since their appeal is largely built on flag-waving patriotism, it is especially difficult to admit such vulnerabilities.