Even long-term Bush supporters like the Heritage Foundation are expressing fundamental concern about the President’s approach to fiscal responsibility. According to the Heritage Foundation, federal deficits are expected to rise to $1 trillion per year by the year 2017, with a $16 trillion national debt, twice today’s level. After that, deficits should grow to $2 trillion per year.
Financial commentator Bill Bonner writes this: “George W. Bush will go down in history not as a great war president, we recall predicting earlier this week, but as the greatest debt-beat president the country has ever had. In his few years in office, the feds have borrowed more than $1.05 trillion from foreign governments and banks. This is more than all the rest of the nation’s administrations put together, from 1776 to 2000. Last month, the U.S. national debt passed the $8 trillion mark. This year’s budget deficit alone added $319 billion to the country’s obligations. According to the feds themselves, deficits will rise to $873 billion per year within 10 years. Two years more and they will be at $1 trillion per year, with a national debt edging up to $20 trillion. By 2017, annual deficits are supposed to reach $2 trillion per year. These figures are not just guesses. They’re projections based on boondoggle laws already on the books.”