On Please, Not That Briar Patch, Mr. President !

At his last news conference President Bush argued that his administration and the Republican congress could take credit for America’s robust economy and the fact that we are safe on the home front. On these two issues he believed American voters would assure a continuation of Republican rule. Democrats should welcome this “briar patch.”

Is the economy strong? In 2001, the President inherited a yearly budget surplus of $284 billion. At that time, he predicted a $516 billion surplus for fiscal year 2006 yet the federal government ran a deficit of $248 billion last year missing its projection by $764 billion. President Bush considered this a “smashing success” calling the numbers "proof of "sound fiscal policies in Washington”. If the President is successful in implementing his economic agenda -- including making his tax cuts permanent for the wealthy -- deficits will total nearly $3.5 trillion over the next 10 years, a record high. The income and wealth gap between the upper one percent and the rest of Americans is higher than at any time since the Great Depression of the late 1920s and the purchasing power of the average middle class is about what it was in the mid 1970’s while real wages have not kept pace with inflation for the working person. Finally, our trade balances are reaching a critical point and soon we will be paying out far more to service our debt to the rest of the world than we bring in. Our debt financed consumerism may well spend the end of the American economic hegemony.

Are we more secure on the home front? This claim is more dangerous than delusional given the rate at which our foreign policy is breading the conditions of terrorism and hostility not just in the mid-east, but around the globe. A false sense of security is dangerous.

If our candidates are not talking about these issues, and the war in Iraq, seriously, then our democracy is in greater trouble than even our enemies imagine. The democrats could not have found themselves in a better republican briar patch.