Less red ink, but still sinking

The deficit for the budget year that ended Sept. 30 was $81 billion lower than had been projected in February, and 34.4 percent lower than the $248.2 billion shortfall recorded in fiscal 2006, reflecting faster growth in revenues than in government spending.

That’s important. Both revenues and spending climbed to record levels in 2007. But — despite the best efforts of the drunken sailors in Congress to throw money into the fire — spending rose by “only” 2.8 percent to $2.73 trillion, while revenues rose by a faster 6.7 percent to a record $2.57 trillion, a gain the administration attributed to the economic stimulus from the president’s tax cuts.

Is this good news?

Only in the sense that it would be good news if the captain of a sinking ship came on the loudspeakers to announce the pumps have been performing better than expected, and the craft is therefore settling into the sea a little more slowly than it was an hour ago.

Bottom line: still sinking.

Really good news would require that the captain report the pumps are now running ahead of the leaks, that the ship will soon be riding high enough out of the water for real repairs to begin. The equivalent from Washington would be news that the budget is now in surplus — revenues exceeding spending.

Opposition Democrats immediately complained that the improvement in the deficit this year did not mask the fact that Bush’s economic policies have transformed the budget surpluses of the Clinton years into record deficits, thus running up an unprecedented national debt.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said President Bush would “go down in history as the most fiscally irresponsible president ever. The fact is that the nation’s debt has exploded on his watch — rising by $3 trillion since 2001, to $9 trillion today.”

That’s true. Though we’re trying to imagine Sen. Conrad applauding and shouting “Way to go!” if the president had vetoed the majority of the spending bills the Congress has sent him over the past seven years.

Many blame the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They’re costly, no doubt — and may Democrats voted for those allocations. Which Democrat wants to close down the federal departments of Energy, Education and Agriculture to make up the difference?

The republic survived a long time without them.

And given the Democratic habit of declaring GOP budgets “dead on arrival” 25 years ago, when Ronald Reagan used to submit spending plans that actually included the occasional cut, perhaps it would be a tad more accurate to condemn “current bipartisan spending policies.”

What is significant here is the proof — yet again — that even relatively minor tax cuts do encourage people to invest in the American economy, with the result that the federal government collects record revenues.

The problem is not a shortage of government revenues. Government agencies are swimming in unprecedented floods of cash at every level.

The reason our government continues to pile up massive debt — debt which must be either paid off or defaulted in the time of our grandchildren — is not a lack of revenue, but the giddy and irresponsible rush of legislators to come up with ever more fantastical schemes to spend the loot.