"Republicans have shown they can't be trusted with our tax dollars."

[Nbadan]

- Howard Dean

GOP wary of adding to rising U.S. debt

WASHINGTON -- Stung by sticker shock, congressional Republicans are struggling to embrace President George W. Bush's ambitious and expensive agenda while avoiding the economic and political pitfalls of massive new debt.

The numbers speak for themselves: Ten-year cost projections are $2.2 trillion to overhaul Social Security, $724 billion for the Medicare drug benefit, $1.1 trillion to make tax cuts permanent, and untold billions to secure Iraq and Afghanistan beyond this year.

Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, are responding with a slew of suggestions, from raising taxes and delaying some of the president's proposals to cutting spending more deeply

Free Press

Sounds to me like some 'self- led Conservative Republicans' are beginning to worry about how they are supposed to sell themselves to their cons uents in 06 as 'reformers' if they themselves are now the spending problems.

Since Eisenhower was President the ac ulated annual federal deficits have totaled around $4 trillion. Over 90% of that total has been ac ulated under Republican Presidents and less than 10% under Democratic Presidents. In that same time period the deficit has exceeded 3% of GDP 14 times. Every single time was under a Republican President. Ike was the last fiscally conservative Republican in the White House.

[Clandestino]

you win dan...let's just let social security go bankrupt... or lets not make it available until we're 75.

[JoeChalupa]

Well I know that no matter if Bush is successful on reducing the deficit the next president is going to be sacked with a huge budget task so I look for republicans to start lashing out sooner rather than later.

[scott]

How about we just cancel social security all together and let me put that extra 6.2% of my salary into my 401k.