The Administration’s Budget-Busting Ways

Re “Bush’s Impossible Math,” Jan. 29: Could President Bush and his economic advisors really be as stupid as they seem? Could they truly believe that creating mind-boggling deficits will help the U.S. economy? That it is possible to borrow our way to prosperity? Or is something more nefarious afoot? Is Bush steering the country toward bankruptcy so that in a few years only the elimination of all entitlement programs, including Social Security and Medicare, and the closing of their associated government agencies will prevent the U.S. government from going into a total meltdown?

Marvin J. Wolf

Los Angeles

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Two billion dollars a day, every day. No, it’s not the spending on the war against terrorism or the new defense budget. It is how much our national debt increases every 24 hours. Over $7 trillion dollars.

Anybody worried?

Isaac Hirschbein

La Mesa

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The Bush administration greatly underestimated the cost of the Iraq war and now has underestimated the cost of the Medicare reform bill by 33% (Jan. 30). It took just a few months in both cases to uncover these errors. I think we need an administration that can count.

Ritas Smith

Torrance