Stupidest People Alive
The staff of National Review, that is.
The on-budget federal deficit--the deficit treating Social Security as a separate stand-alone entity--will in all likelihood total some $3.4 trillion over the next ten years even if all the Bush tax cuts are allowed to expire and even if discretionary spending is effectively frozen. If the tax cuts are extended--as George W. Bush dearly wishes them to be--and if real discretionary spending grows as fast as population (as it will), then the ten-year on-budget deficit estimate is some $6.6 trillion.
The editors of National Review are alarmed at the budget crisis. They call on George W. Bush to show "leadership":
Editors on Federal Budget on National Review Online: The most important ingredient at the moment, however, is presidential leadership. It has been absent for five years on spending. Bush is said to rise to the occasion when confronted with crises. He is about to confront one within his own party on spending. Let the rising begin.
And what leadership do they want him to show? Here is the National Review-endorsed deficit reduction program:
President Bush must endorse a serious, realistic set of budget offsets, and the most promising area is corporate welfare.... According to the RSC, eliminating corporate welfare would cut $5 billion in 2006 and $50 billion over ten years....
$50 billion is a small fraction--0.0076--1/132 of the projected ten-year deficit.
That is what National Review calls a "serious, realistic" approach to the budget crisis.
Stupidest people alive.
