[Mb-civic] Choose: Guns or Butter - Richard Cohen - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Choose: Guns or Butter

By Richard Cohen
Thursday, September 22, 2005; Page A25

On Aug. 3, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent a message to Congress 
in which he said that the United States could not continue to fight a 
war in Vietnam and at the same time continue his Great Society programs 
without, among other things, raising taxes. George Bush ought to read 
that message. It was titled "The Hard and Inescapable Facts."

For Bush, facts are neither hard nor inescapable. He believes in 
"magical math" -- a firm understanding that somehow, in some way, 
something will happen to make everything come out right in the end. This 
is the economics practiced by the dreamy who think that today's credit 
card purchase will never come due. This, in a nutshell, is the financial 
blueprint for the United States of America.

For Johnson, the realization that bills come due came too late. Early on 
he said, "We can continue the Great Society while we fight in Vietnam," 
but he sensed -- canny pol that he was -- that the American people would 
pay for the former but not, if they had to choose, the latter. When 
Johnson finally had to ask for a tax increase, he was on his way out as 
president. Less than a year after delivering his message about hard 
facts, he had to face the hardest one himself: He announced he would not 
seek reelection.

Bush, having won a second term, cannot seek reelection and so he may 
never become politically accountable for his mismanagement of the 
nation's finances. As Johnson initially attempted, Bush is telling the 
American people they can have both guns and butter -- two for the price 
of one. In Bush's case, "guns" is the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan) and 
the "butter" is domestic programs such as enriched Medicare along with 
the war on terrorism, which Bush himself has characterized as virtually 
endless. In his case, though, he has not only refused to raise taxes, he 
has actually lowered them. LBJ could only marvel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/21/AR2005092102504.html
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20050922/38a544b0/attachment.htm