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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (10838)	2/3/2006 8:31:25 PM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541869

For what it's worth, let me show you a WSJ piece written by Jackie Calmas, who, along with John Harwood, is among the tippy top of the WSJ's folks who track politics. I should add that I have respect for much of the WJS with the clear exception of the editorial page. So it surprised and disheartened me to see this piece which could easily have been written by the editorial staff. Calmas clearly wants to make Bush's point that entitlements are the problem. Fine. I disagree but that's hardly new. However, he/she sets up the piece by noting that 84% of the federal budget is basically nonnegotiable, so, by the way let's talk about entitlements. What are the three elements of the 84%: interest on the federal debt, defense and homeland security, and entitlements. Well, last time I checked payments of interest on the federal debt have been increasing since friend Bush came into office and converted a surplus into a raging deficit. We could note that in any decent article. And last time I looked the Iraq war alone is savaging the federal budget in ways large and, no doubt, in ways hidden. We simply don't know how much. A decent article would at least mention those items. So, when folk talk about cutting entitlements as if that's the big budget problem, I get a little warm under the proverbial collar. online.wsj.com