In article <4oglc01nl803j7buabu0ce7i0ro9jvt8cn@4ax.com>, Michael Cash
<buggeroff@fake.com> wrote:

> >I figure it deserves to go back to the People. Well, I'm just as much a 
> >People as anybody else.
> 
> My point is that if they didn't have an immediate need for it (within
> that budget year, or perhaps the next) then it shouldn't have been
> taken from the People to begin with.

We should start fund-raising for hurricane disasters after they happen? 
Have a bake-sale for the war du jour only after we've started deficit
spending to accomodate it?  Then pay the interest on such borrowed
monies to further hammer the taxpayer?  If it's the taxpayer's
interests we're protecting, that should be considered.

Not that politicians (of any stripe) consider the taxpayer anything
other than game-fowl for their corporate sponsors.

> And I have no problem with paying
> down the debt. If they're going to actually use the "surplus" to pay
> down the debt, then fine. But is that actually what was going to be
> done with it?

Good question.  Every time we get a law to provide some fiscal
responsibility, our duly marketed officials write a rider on some bill
or other to exempt their pork-barrels, or laws to discard them
altogether.  Both Republicans and Democrats are angry at Bush's
shopping spree at this point.  These are the same guys that have been
more than glad to gut every law devised to demand a balanced budget or
limited deficit troughs.

I assume it's because their own pork-barrels are being denied, not that
we're digging the deepest deficit hole since Reagan bored his way to
middle-earth--God love him!  He was, after all, the greatest president
ever, and I'm sure he wasn't responsible for any of the bad things that
might (or might not!) have happened while he was (or was not!) in town.

-- 
First they gerrymander us into one-party fiefs. Then they tell us they only
care about the swing districts. Then they complain about voter apathy.
 -- Gail Collins