Rou

President Bush signed a new cap on the national debt Monday. The raised cap adds another 781 billion dollars of leeway for a maximum debt of nearly nine trillion dollars.

He had to do this because the US government was in danger of defaulting on treasury notes for the first time in history. If spending patterns are not altered dramatically, an additional increase will be required next year.

Now, a lot of that debt comes from the 9/11 related repairs and initiatives, the hurricane clean-up and, of course, the war in Iraq. Now, regardless of your opinions on those subjects, it’s clear we have a serious fiscal issue here.

There are tons of pork projects that simply need to go. Bridges in Alaska that need to be cut. Defense spending that has needed to be re-examined for better efficiency. Social programs that don’t accomplish their stated goals. Education spending that is out of control and horribly misappropriated.

In fact, that seems to be the general theme for much of the federal government’s spending plans. Too much money going out to the wrong places. Or in the rare cases that it goes in the right direction, it’s hijacked along the way so that it still doesn’t work out.

The problem seems to stem from the conservatives we have in office. Apparently they only read the first part of the conservative handbook. Cut taxes. They did that. They’ve gotten very good at that. But they seem to have skipped the second part. Cut spending. Reduce the power of the federal government by removing their influence.

Partly, there is an understanding with government. When faced with a economic slump, you need to lower taxes and increase government spending to help the economy grow. But there is a limit to this concept.

We put 8.1 trillion dollars on the credit card, and the interest payments alone will eventually break the economy far worse. They had to raise the debt cap so they could pay out Treasury notes. That is to say, they had to take on more debt to pay for the interest on the old debt.

Think about that.

Then, tell me where the fiscal conservatives are.