CNN Money
Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill did let loose with a great noisemaking screed in 2004 in the form of journalist Ron Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill," but hasn't been heard from since.
All of which makes Douglas Holtz-Eakin a wonderful breath of fresh air. He wasn't any kind of big cheese in the Bush White House - just chief economist of the Council of Economic Advisers - but followed that up with three years as director of the Congressional Budget Office.
Basically the article notes that despite multiple economic teams, only O'Neill and Holtz-Eakin have been willing to acknowledge the obvious . . . Bushies can't count or they don't give a crap.
"There is no rational linkage between what's coming in and what's going out," he said, describing the current fiscal-policy mindset in both the White House and Congress. "There's an adherence to tax cuts and an adherence to increased spending. It just doesn't add up."
No way! This guy must be a total moron! He's claiming that tax cuts and increased spending have produced HUGE deficits. I've never heard such heresy.
Part of the problem in today's Washington, Holtz-Eakin said, "is that the staffs at the White House and in Congress are chiefly campaign staffs."
Independent, straight-talking analysis is no longer valued, and even a lot of the people like him who come to Washington from academia (he'd been a professor at Syracuse) "have gotten sucked into this perpetual campaign mentality ... The culture has shifted to the way you say it rather than what you say."
Hmm, does that mean the chief campaign consultant can shift to chief policy advisor and then back to campaign consultant with ease? I'm sure it's no problem when all your ideas are about how to spin.
Despite some high hopes early on from Holtz-Eakin and other Republican economists that Bush would rein in future entitlement spending, it is looking like the current president's chief budgetary legacy will be deficits as far as the eye can see.
Don't forget the diaster in Iraq, divisive social policy, assaults on the Constitution, disregard for the law, violation of human rights . . .
nstead, he said, "we ran deficits because of the administration's take on things, which was ad hoc and very short term." First there was the 2000 campaign promise to cut taxes, then an economic slowdown, then Sept. 11. And in general there was a tendency to put budgetary policy well down on the priority list.
One obviously higher priority has been the military: "There is no readiness to discuss the Pentagon's budget in the administration," Holtz-Eakin said. "The military has received gloriously preferential treatment from the word go."
No way! Donald Rumsfeld and Cheney run this country?! Lies! Lies!
So there you have it, from an authorative source: The President and Congress didn't mean to run such a profligate fiscal policy. They just didn't really care.
So a question for the vocal minority clinging to the Bush Regime . . . are you willing to admit that Bush and his junta have told a lot of LIES? I'm not talking about campaign promises. I'm saying the Bush Regime has nearly 6 years of saying one thing and doing another . . . except for tax cuts, of course.
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