BCT Editorial – 3/9/06

This page was last updated on March 9, 2006.

Buried in debt; Editorial; Beaver County Times; March 9, 2006.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject editorial.

“Spendthrifts never see the error of their ways.

“Perhaps that’s why Treasury Secretary John Snow could write that the Bush administration had taken ‘all prudent and legal actions,’ including tapping certain government retirement funds, to keep from hitting the $8.18 trillion national debt limit and that lawmakers had to pass a new debt ceiling immediately to avoid the nation’s first-ever default on its obligations to bondholders.

“Of course, the White House will get its way. Congress has no choice in the matter. If it failed to hike the debt ceiling, the government would default on its obligations, creating economic turmoil at home and abroad.

“But could we at least be spared the hypocrisy of pretending that this administration has done all if can to keep the nation’s fiscal house in order. From the very beginning, it has pursued reckless borrow-and-spend policies that are burying future generations of Americans in debt.

“Some people, one of them being Vice President Dick Cheney, contend that deficits don’t matter. They might not in the present, but they will in the future.”

[RWC] The authors of Times editorials really should refrain from referring to its perceived hypocrisy of others. People who live in glass houses …

This editorial might be believable if the Times had ever recommended serious spending cuts. That’s not the case, of course. Indeed, many editorials have advocated government programs that would have increased spending. “Healthcare reform” is one of those programs.