The Irresponsibility Tax

What are the costs of Bush’s rampant deficit spending. Dwight M. does some number-crunching and concludes that

… if everything goes right and we do not slip back into recession before 2009 and we do not have any other wars, and there are no costs in Iraq or Afghanistan after this year, and we do not fix the AMT problem and Congress abides by spending recommendations, we will be approaching the end of the Bush Cycle with no hope of paying down any of the debt incurred at the beginning of the cycle. Indeed, Mr. Bush hopes that we will be paying interest on “only” an additional $2.4 trillion dollars. If rates remain fairly low and we can service that debt at, say, 5%, the annual Irresponsibility Tax for the Bush Cycle will be $120 billion each and every year until we begin running surpluses.

The total Irresponsibility Tax for those two cycles [Reagan and Bush II] will be about $200 billion per year. To put that in perspective, the Irresponsibility Tax from the Reagan and Bush Cycles will be larger than Mr. Bush’s proposed discretionary spending for NASA, the Department of Agriculture, the Commerce Department, the Department of Education, the Energy Department, HUD, the Interior Department, the Justice Department, the State Department, and EPA combined.

There are about 100 million tax returns filed each year. The Irresponsibility Tax for the Bush and Reagan Cycles will amount to about $2,000 per year for each taxpayer and will continue every year…

AB