A thought: Newspaper article after newspaper article reports that President Bush is going to start cutting the deficit this year and plans to halve it by the end of this term. Yet, at the same time, the White House is also saying that the president plans to borrow roughly two trillion dollars to finance his Social Security phase-out plan. Has anyone thought of connecting these two claims together? It seems obvious on its face that rather than steering the federal government back toward fiscal restraint he actually plans to borrow at rates far beyond what he did in his first term.
And, of course, Cato doesn’t mind a bit — but that’s another story.
