Americans’ willingness to accept the Iraq war was enhanced by the fact that so few were asked to sacrifice anything to fight it, wrote The Los Angeles Times in an editorial yesterday.
Excerpts:
An estimate released Monday by the White House placed next year’s federal budget deficit at a record $482 billion. .
The Bush administration tried to spin Monday’s grim budget news as fallout from the economic stimulus package approved by a bipartisan congressional majority in February. The $600-per-taxpayer rebate certainly didn’t help, costing the Treasury $168 billion, but it’s by no means the source of the deficit problem. That goes back several years — to when Bush and a compliant Congress launched an invasion of Iraq costing hundreds of billions of dollars and, rather than raise taxes to pay for it, continued to cut them. The $482-billion figure actually understates the size of the shortfall because it doesn’t include $80 billion in war costs. Washington’s uncontrolled spending at the beginning of the decade made deficits almost inevitable, but the growth of the shortfall is being worsened by a troubled economy.
Americans’ willingness to accept the war was enhanced by the fact that so few were asked to sacrifice anything to fight it, but the sacrifice wasn’t avoided, only deferred. Excessive government debt is dangerous for the same reason that excessive personal debt is: An ever-increasing share of future budgets will be eaten up by interest payments, leaving less money for everything else, and when times get hard, the belt-tightening could become brutal.
