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A lot of contention here to be sure, but but it’s safe to say GWB presided over what has happened in his term of office. And Cato is right that real tax revenue and real spending has increased to levels never seen before.

Deficit spending is held up as the bogeyman by whichever party wishes to use it as a talking point against the other, but it’s not near the big deal it’s made out to be. Still, it’s an incremental burden that adds to the misery of paying taxes, whatever the rate or amount that is paid.

But we ain’t seen nothing yet.

The deficit, nor current spending, is not what is going to hurt us in the end, but rather entitlements and especially Medicare and Social Security. It’s going to start getting real tight around the same time as I plan to start drawing it. A lot of people are going to have to wrap their brains around the truth that these programs are not, and have never been, an entitlement, but just another discretionary spending issue that can be changed by any Congress at any time, and by necessity it will be in one way or another. This is not a new development, but something that should have been well known for a long time.

I earn a little over the median household income, and I figure a little more than half of that goes to the government. For all of that, nothing has been done to stop or even slow the runaway train that has been barreling towards our economy for the last 50 years. It’s as if every past administration and every past Congress has been sitting on it’s hands, hoping the bomb will go off before the train comes through town, and cause it to fall into a big hole or something.

So - with the current administration and Congress, and all of the others since the baby boom who have just sat and waited for the bomb (or whatever they have been waiting for), all of America should be disappointed.

To Dubya’s credit, he’s one of the few to propose a workable solution, but he was, predictably, not forceful enough to bully Congress into bringing it about.

And it's almost too late.