Jill Lawrence a columnist for Political Daily writes;
We've come a long way from the days when Bill Clinton fumed over his new role as an "Eisenhower Republican," driven to sacrifice his 1992 campaign pledges on the altar of deficit reduction. Nobody's an Eisenhower Republican now, and it's a little scary.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the White House's Office of Management and Budget are releasing new deficit projections Tuesday morning. The good news expected from OMB: Apparently the federal deficit will be $1.58 trillion, instead of $1.8 trillion, for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30.
The bad news: That's still really, really terrible. The worse news: Over the next 10 years, we thought the government was on track to spend $7.1 trillion more than it takes in. But now OMB thinks it's looking more like $9 trillion.
That would practically double the total U.S. debt, which stood at $11.7 trillion as of Friday. Last month alone, the government paid $19.8 billion in interest on the national debt.
The administration leaked word Monday night that President Obama would reappoint Fed chairman Ben Bernanke to his job -- big news on the economic front, no doubt meant to divert us and the markets from those large, unpleasant numbers. But they are not so easily buried.
It's hard not to hyperventilate over the many better ways we could spend that interest money (covering the uninsured, anyone?). Hard not to wonder what our huge debt says about our character as a nation (selfish free-loaders on the next generation, casually putting the global economy at risk?)
It's hard not to fret about what that debt could do to us in a few years (drive up interest rates and taxes, sharply curtail government services) if we don't take steps to deal with it soon. Even now the projections are a threat to Obama's plans on health, energy and climate change – plans he campaigned on but, unlike Clinton, is insisting on pursuing in the teeth of a recession.
For more on this check out the full politics daily article at; http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/08/25/the-skyrocketing-deficit-how-scared-should-we-be/
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