Joe Scarborough
The key budget issue is the growing deficit
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Are you the type of person who likes order in your intellectual life? The kind of person who can read the morning paper and pretty much figure out what's going on in your neighborhood, your country and your world?
If so, you're not alone. Former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Dukakis was the kind of guy who would read books on Swedish land use when he went on vacations at the beach. He loved order and the lack of it drove him up the wall.
In 1988 it was reported that studying the confusing maze of nuclear treaties between the Soviets and America left the former Massachusetts governor so confounded that he was depressed for days.
Like Dukakis then, I find myself now in a confusing vortex of papers producing sound and fury but signifying nothing.
In the the Feb. 8th edition of the LA Times, we read a news analysis of President Bush's budget. The conclusion drawn? That Bush is spending too much money and that the era of big government has returned for good.
Meanwhile, the paper's ideological sister on the East Coast, the New York Times, editorializes today that the Administration's fiscal blueprint offers the cruelest of cuts. The targeted victims are the poor, farmers, and veterans.
On the very same morning the LA Times was talking about bloated budgets, the USA Today ran a screaming headline talking about how Bush's "big cuts" were going to run into fierce opposition on Capitol Hill. (Feel free to insert your favorite "sky-is-falling" quote from the Democrat of your choice here.)
For the President, it is the best of all worlds.
He can go to conservatives and say the liberals are after him for trying to protect taxpayers' money. And for those who say his cuts are cruel, the President can talk about how some of the most powerful media outlets are attacking him for not going far enough in his cuts.
For the most part, most papers failed to discuss in detail the key issue: whether the growing deficit will lead to an economic collapse in the United States once the Asian central banks and Saudi royals decide to stop funding our debt.
What does that mean?
Well, your country is almost $8 trillion in debt. And over the past several years, the Chinese and Saudis have led the way in buying up the dollar. They still think it is a currency worth investing in. But as the annual deficit and overall nation debt continue to soar, countries will stop buying the dollar. When that happens, interest rates will explode in a way that will even make Jimmy Carter's days of malaise look like halcyon days.
Bottom line: without sustained economic growth of 4% or higher over the next four years, the President will not reduce the debt, foreign central banks will not buy up our dollars, and interest rates will skyrocket to unprecedented rates.
All three will cripple the U.S. economy.
The good news? You don't have to sulk like Dukakis. You can go out and work harder to build our economy or you can start drinking heavily in the morning so not to be depressed by the morning papers.
If you choose the latter, I recommend vodka with a splash of cranberry juice. If you decide to build the economy, then stop playing on your computer and get back to work!
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Former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) hosts “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC. He is the author of the recently published "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)Comment by clicking here.