3/21/2006

Debt and War

As our country enters its 4th year of war in Iraq, they are spending like mad men, and have approved another debt increase to prove it. It seems as though the "conservatives" running Washington, are anything but conservative in their approach to our country's fiscal status. As "managers" of America, they are indifferent to their projects' cost of capital, and when it comes to running the world's most influential nation, they take on debt like it's the last day of the world. Shouldn't leaders have some kind of accountability and integrity in regard to how they finance government projects? If every business the world over has to, why shouldn't the U.S.A. have to do the same?

1 comment:

Dr. Tufte said...

-1 on Zoe's comment for grammatical errors.

I couldn't have said it better (and I tend to support the war).

I do need to clarify two things:
1) It is Congress that controls spending. They could starve the Bush administration if they wanted to. They don't.
2) The increase in the debt ceiling is not something to worry about. This is a law they choose to have, not one that they must of should have. It is routinely increased.

The way the Republicans have run the legislative show over the last 12 years shows definitively that the problem is not with the parties but with having power.

I don't see an easy way to rein that in. It's helpful to recognize that the job of people in Congress is to spend other people's money - who wouldn't be profligate in that case.

Zoe: there is no sense in which a government that places its own debt through private issue can have the sort of crisis you envision.