Editorial: A rope in the financial bog

Thursday, March 9, 2006 | 7:19 a.m.

Under President Bush, the federal government has fallen into a financial bog.

The Treasury Department, in a recent report, said if federal accounting methods followed those used by private businesses, the actual deficit would be $760 billion, not the reported $319 billion.

Treasury officials in recent weeks have also been on a desperate search for ways to keep federal spending and borrowing below the congressionally mandated debt limit of $8.18 trillion. After exhausting all possibilities, including drawing from the federal employees' pension fund, they failed.

Congress will take a vote next week on a typical fix under the Bush administration - that of simply increasing the debt limit. When Bush took office in 2001, the debt limit was $5.95 trillion. Raises in 2002, 2003 and 2004 have brought it to its current level and next week may see another gigantic leap.

Many Republicans in Congress facing mid-term elections are beginning to have second thoughts, though, about another of Bush's proposed solutions - cutting programs for the middle class and poor such as Medicare and food stamps. This is doubly good news, because without those program cuts as offsets, Congress might not agree to losing trillions in a new round of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy.

Ending the tax cuts - now there is a rope in the bog, if only the Bush administration would grab onto it.