The Long Goodbye

Bush can't get out of Dodge quick enough.

by Brian Howard

There are a whole lot of zeroes in 10 trillion. Thirteen of them, to be precise. That's the cost to the American people — according to Linda J. Bilmes and Joseph E. Stiglitz's piece "The $10 Trillion Hangover" in the January issue of Harper's — of eight years of the George W. Bush administration. That's $10 trillion. As in, the $700 billion bank bailout times 14.

Bilmes is a lecturer in public finance at Harvard and a former Department of Commerce assistant secretary. Stiglitz is a Columbia U. professor of economics and a 2001 Nobel Prize winner. Together they penned the book The Three Trillion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict. And in Harper's, they argue that a nearly $5 trillion increase in national debt, plus a combination of bailout debt, interest, national defense, veteran care and a huge new Social Security commitment adds up to that 13-zero number.

People throw around figures like billion and trillion like they mean anything to you or me. I can't even fathom what $1 million feels like. What is $10 trillion? In 2007, according to the World Bank, the United States was a $13 trillion operation by GDP (and who knows what that number will be this year?). Which means that, essentially, thanks to the Bush administration, the U.S. has taken out something like a mortgage on 75 percent of its net worth. No, it's not a figure we have to settle up on all at once — there are no collection agencies for this sort of thing. But when you consider that Bush took office eight long years ago with a large budget surplus and a shrinking national debt, it's no wonder everyone's making like Muntader al-Zaidi and taking parting shots. 

What got lost somewhere is the idea that things like invasions and nation building cost money. And that the way governments make money is through taxes. And that if you're going to hamstring a government's revenue stream by giving huge tax breaks to your hugely rich friends, the ledgers, at some point, aren't going to add up. 

Bush's behavior in the last week has been deplorable. Not only did he shrug off having a man's shoes hurtled toward his bulbous head during a press conference in Iraq with an infantile "so what?", he used the same line to dismiss his admission that the U.S. invasion of Iraq is what made the country an al-Qaida hot spot in the first place. It's the kind of response, when paired with something like major budget mismanagement, that makes one wonder if Bush is still operating on some version of middle school social and political protocol. Pardon me for going all Keith Olbermann here, but, "So what," Mr. President? Really?

Harper's, in that same issue, takes its own parting shot of sorts, dedicating a three-page (!) installment of its "Harper's Index" feature to a Bush administration retrospective. A couple of favorites: "Number of press conferences at which Bush has referred to a question as a 'trick': 14"; "Rank of Bush among U.S. presidents with the highest disapproval rating: 1."

While Bush and his 30 percent approval rating can't get out of Dodge quick enough, it feels like there's just not enough time to vent all the fury. But we can try.

How are you bidding W. adieu? Tell us in the comments.

The Other Goodbye

This week we say farewell to a City Paper institution. After 13 years, Mary Patel will cease writing her Political Notebook column in these pages. Earlier this year, Mary debuted her first feature film, Electile Dysfunction, a political documentary tracking the 2006 Casey/Santorum U.S. Senate race. Mary's become increasingly involved in the film world and is ending her long-running column to focus on her film interests. She says she'll continue to contribute special reports as situations and stories arise. We're nothing but grateful for everything she's done for the paper over the years, and we look forward to covering her cinematic exploits in these pages.

(bhoward@citypaper.net)