2008-09-25

I'm seeing black helicopters

When Bush entered office, he quickly got rid of a budget surplus, arguably to prevent Congress from doing anything productive--such as solving the health care crisis. Now, the bookend, he's in crisis mode asking for a massive increase in the national debt with a figure the Treasury admitted it pulled out its ass. Any chance this is a ploy to prevent the next Congress doing anything useful for the foreseeable future? No one's going to support additional expenditures once this boondoggle passes.

2 comments:

Germanicu$ said...

How do you know? This could MAKE the gov't money. Bush will be remembered not only as The Liberator, The Decider, and the guy who fixed that whole AIDS problem in Africa, but also as a benificient and shrewd economic manager who left the country with a cash cow.

Mockrates said...

I think you ascribe too much agency to them at this point. Grover Norquist has left the building--they're basically flying by the seat of their pants. The $700 billion number was chosen because 1) it's huge enough to inspire confidence, but 2) it's not quite close enough to $1 trillion for the media to call it the "trillion dollar bailout," which just sounds ridiculously, unimaginably huge (it's the politician version of the J.C. Penny-originated pricing strategy of selling something for $1.99 instead of $2.00).