Another reason tax cuts are a bad idea right now

If Congress doesn't agree to raise the US debt limit, the US Treasury department says that we could end up defaulting on our debts as a nation.

Now, typically, if you or I were to be facing, essentially, bankruptcy, we would have a difficult time getting someone to let us go further into debt in order to pay of the debts we already have. In part, that's because when people borrow from Peter to pay Paul (as the old saying goes), it tends to get them even deeper into debt and makes it that much harder to climb back out.

Last year, our debt ceiling was at $5.95 trillion (with a "t") and Congress boosted it by $450 billion to our current cap of $6.4 trillion. Now they're talking about raising it again, this time to $7.38 trillion.

Think about that for a minute. When Bush took office, we had a budget surplus. In less than 3 years, we are now facing either allowing ourselves to go $7.38 trillion into debt or have to default on the debt we already owe.

And these figures don't take the Presidents much-desired new tax cuts into account yet.

Now, I'm a normal person. I don't really like paying taxes all that much - but I do it because I understand it's necessary so that we can keep the government - and the country - running. The government keeps talking about how we have to make spending cuts so that we can afford to pay for all the new safety measures that are needed because of the "new" risk of terrorism (a risk that actually isn't new, it's just more real now that one attack has happened). And yet somehow, the Bush administration seems to be of the opinion that giving tax cuts is a good idea and will help the economy?

Think they'll ever let us know what planet it is they're really from?