The Bush Tax: What W Has Cost You

George W. Bush has financed all his colossal blunders with borrowed money. Not that he has to pay the bill. You do.

Now for the fun part--- adding up the bill. Better mix yourself a stiff drink. You're going to need it. If you don't do adult beverages, may I recommend something in a Schedule 1 Felony narcotic?

Since we're not running the Federal Reserve, we'll work in rough, but so far as I can tell, accurate back of the envelope calculations.

By the time President Bush leaves office, the national debt will have increased by about $4 trillion, according to figures cited by the Washington Post.

There's a lot of smoke in mirrors in the administration's budget projections, like making no allowances for realistic costs for the war, or for fixing the alternative minimum tax problem looming over the middle class and what are likely to be overly optimistic estimates about economic growth. Let's assume the numbers are even worse, but for the sake of finishing our math assignment, we'll use the information we have on hand.

Next we add $3 trillion for the cost of the war, according to the more conservative figure in the estimate ranging from $3 trillion to $5 trillion by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz..

There are about 100 million people who pay taxes in the United States.

Divide $7 trillion by 100 miliion and you find that it adds up to $70,000 per U.S. taxpayer.

Maybe it's time to freshen up that drink now.

For giggles, let's also assume we try to pay the bill over the same time frame we racked up the debt, in eight years.

Putting aside the fact that the debt continues to increase because of the interest due even assuming we balance the budget as soon as the next president takes office, that works out to $8750 per taxpayer per year.

If I were Obama or Clinton, I'd start talking about the epic fiscal mismanagement of the current administration, put a price tag on it and label it the Bush Tax.

"Sorry about that my fellow Americans, but we need to put our house in order and every one of us has got to pay for the mistakes of the last eight years. Unlike some of your other tax dollars which actually yield some benefit, this money has been wasted, but there's nothing we can do about it now but pay up and move on."

Remember Bill Clinton and the budget surplus and how we were giddy trying to figure out how to spend the money before we even paid off the accumulated debt of the Reagan and first Bush?

Fuggedaboutit. $70 thousand dollars per taxpayer? Not going to happen. Not anytime soon.

Anyone old enough to vote is likely to be paying for President Bush's mistakes for the better part of the rest of their life.

There's an evil genius behind the Bush Cheney strategy that relies on sinister fiscal duplicity, without which much of their treachery would not have been possible.

The lives lost resulting from this administration's mistakes are an abstract concept for the vast majority of Americans who have no relatives or close friends in the armed forces or who live in Iraq. If Americans had been forced to endure the presidency of George W. Bush on a pay as you go basis, it would have triggered a massive popular revolt that would have changed the course of recent history.