Finance 101- two sides of the same coin!

by Blogmonkey | April 16, 2007 at 05:23 pm

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Senator Bill Frist MD and the Comptroller General, David Walker seem to live in different universes.

As Majority Leader, I worked hard to keep your taxes low . . . passed the third-largest tax cut in American history . . . created and extended a state sales tax deduction . . . and just last year stopped a stealth effort to enact a $70 billion tax increase on the American people.
Over the last four years, Republican tax cuts have created more than 7.5 million new jobs. They’ve driven unemployment to record lows – and strengthened family bank accounts across Tennessee and the entire United States.

But the Democrats’ first budget returns to the same tax-and-spend liberal policies that have traditionally crushed economic growth.

Instead of increasing the tax burden faced by America’s families, Congress should make the Republican tax cuts permanent . . . because it’s those sound, conservative policies that have fueled 42 consecutive months of job growth.

U.S. Heading For Financial Trouble?

Comptroller Says Medicare Program Endangers Financial Stability

March 4, 2007(CBS)

When the stock market plunges like it did this week,
everyone pays attention. The man you're about to meet says hardly
anyone is paying attention to what really threatens our financial
future. Like an Old Testament prophet, David Walker has been traveling
the country, urging people to "wake up before it's too late."

    But David Walker is no wild-eyed zealot. As Steve Kroft
reports, David Walker is an accountant, the nation’s top accountant to
be exact, the comptroller general of the United States. He has totaled
up our government's income, liabilities, and future obligations and
concluded the numbers simply don’t add up. And he’s not alone. Its been
called the "dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows" – a set
of financial truths so inconvenient that most elected officials don’t
even want to talk about them, which is exactly why David Walker does.

    "I would argue that the most serious threat to the United States is
not someone hiding in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan but our own
fiscal irresponsibility," Walker tells Kroft.

    David Walker is a prudent man and a highly respected public
official. As comptroller general of the United States he runs he
Government Accountability Office, the GAO, which audits the
government's books and serves as the investigative arm of the U.S.
Congress. He has more than 3,000 employees, a budget of a half a
billion dollars, and a message he considers urgent.
"I'm going to show you some numbers…they’re all big and they’re all bad," he says.

So bad, that Walker has given up on elected officials and taken his
message directly to taxpayers and opinion makers, hoping to shape the
debate in the next presidential election.
...

"What’s going on right now is we’re spending more money than we
make…we’re charging it to credit card…and expecting our grandchildren
to pay for it. And that’s absolutely outrageous," he told the editorial
board of the Seattle Post Intelligencer.

You have heard this before, from Ross Perot 15 years ago. You might
have even thought the problem had been solved, when President Clinton
announced, "Tonight, I come before you to announce that the federal
deficit … will be simply zero."
"Well, those days are gone. We've gone from surpluses to huge
deficits and our long range situation is much worse," Walker says.

"President Bush would argue that the economy is in pretty good
shape, unemployment is down, the deficit is actually less than
expected," Kroft remarks.
"The fact is, is that we don't face an immediate crisis. And, so
people say, 'What's the problem?' The answer is, we suffer from a
fiscal cancer. It is growing within us. And if we do not treat it, it
could have catastrophic consequences for our country," Walker replies.
(http://www.cbsnews.com/)