"But that baseline projection is based on financial assumptions that no one expects to pan out. Two of the biggest roadblocks threatening to upend budgetary nirvana: What to do about the looming expiration of tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003, and the growing cost of fixing - or nixing - the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

"Depending on how you address them, those two factors alone could add close to $4 trillion to the federal budget deficit by 2018, according to estimates by the Tax Policy Center.

"Add in the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the growing costs of Medicare and Social Security, and you end up with something more like a budgetary nadir."

George's $20 billion wars, his tax cuts to spur the economy and his diverting resources away from the real issues at home have led to absolute disasters everywhere. A real reverse Midas touch if you aren't one of his constiuency, the top 1% economically.

Conservatives used to say the Soviet Union was run for the "nomenclatura", the top 5% or so of the population. In the US it's a little less broad-based.

Arf