MODERN WAR IS SO CHEAP WE COULD LEARN TO LOVE IT:

Bush Plan Reins In Domestic Spending: Proposal Aims to Balance Budget And Fund Wars (Michael Abramowitz and Lori Montgomery, 2/06/07, Washington Post)

President Bush took aim yesterday at domestic spending as part of a plan to balance the budget in five years without raising taxes while increasing funding for the Iraq war and permanently expanding the military.

With the $2.9 trillion budget he submitted to Congress, Bush signaled he would attempt to squeeze spending on health care, education, housing and other domestic programs important to the Democratic majority for the duration of his term. Overall domestic spending would be held below the rate of inflation in the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 and frozen thereafter. [...]

Some Democrats also questioned the president's math, saying his budget plan relies on a series of rosy economic assumptions to transform the nation's $248 billion deficit into a $61 billion surplus by 2012. Even if the plan is successful, Democrats noted, the president would only be restoring the country's fiscal condition to the surplus he inherited when he took office in 2001.

A staggering achievement, particularly when you consider that at the end of WWII the Democrats had built up a national debt of 120% of GDP or that in the first global war the Brits piled up a debt of 250% of GDP to beat Napoleon. Mind you, Victorian England and post-War American proceeded to completely dominate world affairs and economics in the following centuries, which just goes to show you how insignificant deficits are.

Posted by Orrin Judd at February 6, 2007 8:07 AM