drunken sailors: part 2 - or - why i'm back to voting libertarian

as i wrote the other day, republicans have become every bit the spendthrifts democrats have been for decades. now Bob Novak details the scourging that one member of congress has taken for publicly challenging the republican leadership in its complete lack of fiscal restraint.

whenever i hear that we will balance the federal budget in X years, i am forced to think "why X?" i can understand a bad year. so we have a shortfall and thus a deficit one year. we (humans with but a subtle tinge of logic) adjust our prognostications downward for the following year, assume we'll take in less revenue - and thus adjust our budget downward, to adjust to the shortfall. the really responsible among us will even devote part of that budget to eliminating the debt we took on in the previous year's shortfall... squaring the books, as it were.

but logic fails (often) in DC. pork prevails. good people seem not to care. many of these good people fail to balance their own checkbooks, budgets, finances - so how can i expect them to care?

now Alan Greenspan joins the chorus (publicly!), commenting that the U.S. has lost control of its deficit. recall what happened to the NASDAQ equities market not long after his comments re: the "irrational exuberance" prevalent among many at the time.

[insert simultaneous gasp and groan here.]