With the end of the fiscal year just days away, the Bush administration and its Republican allies are trumpeting what they call “lower deficits.� Don’t be fooled by all their happy talk. The nation’s budget outlook is far worse than what is being claimed.

The increase in debt in 2006 will be far greater than the expected $260 billion deficit. That is because Social Security and Medicare trust funds, which are in temporary surplus, are being used to pay other bills. They are not counted as part of the deficit, but are added to the debt. This year alone, $177 billion of Social Security funds are being borrowed to cover other costs. When you add in those funds and other trust fund surpluses also being spent, the debt is expected to go up by $557 billion in 2006.

Federal debt has exploded under the Bush administration’s policies. At the end of 2001, the year the President took office, gross debt was $5.8 trillion. By the end of 2006, gross debt is estimated to reach $8.5 trillion. And gross debt is projected to soar to $11.6 trillion by the end of 2011.

The result is that we are becoming increasingly reliant on foreigners to buy our debt and finance our deficits.

Disturbingly, we are now the world’s largest debtor nation – responsible for 65 percent of world borrowing by nations.

This debt buildup is not sustainable. It is time for the Bush administration and the Republican Congress to stop hiding the true fiscal condition of the country from the American people.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 25th, 2006 at 4:43 pm and is filed under Economy/Budget, Politics .