The Bush Administration's rationale for debt spending during wartime is unnecessary and unwise. The price tag that came along with this decision is a staggering $9 trillion. That's too much for any one nation to carry.
Congressional pork barrel projects aren't helping either. They are a percentage of the overall budget, but they are adding more to the problem and not to the solution, especially since the government is already overspending. Congress adds insult to injury every time they use federal money to pay for peanut storage in their home states. Or other stupid earmarks.
A $9 trillion debt is the pinnacle of absurdity.
That debt should be paid down 10% every four years until it's a fraction of the federal budget, with no new additions to the debt. Every Administration--starting with the new one that will take office in January 2009--until the debt is nearly retired around the year 2058.
If the government can't fit a program into a balanced budget, then the program should be postponed or canceled.
The military does this all the time. If a weapons system is no longer cost-effective, or is too expensive to build, or is obsolete, they put it out to pasture. The rest of the government should be made to do the same thing.
I think that the government should have the ability to exceed it's budget, but that ability should be used ONLY in times of dire national emergencies, not in everyday situations, as the nation currently is. Yes, the country is at war, but not total war as it was during World War II.
Radical changes need to be made in Washington, and soon. Otherwise, the debt will get so huge that we'll never be able to pay it down.
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