October 31, 2006Comment on Tuesday's editorialsThinking outside the car Virginians who like to get out on their bikes and feet have a friend in Richmond: the Department of Transportation. Wake up and smell the fiscal disaster U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has launched a fiscal wake-up tour, and although the topic is scary -- mounting U.S. debt resembles a financial black hole from which we might not escape -- so far his only groupies are budget and policy wonks. http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-89379">Read more. |
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October 31, 2006
Comment on Tuesday's editorials
Thinking outside the car
Virginia finally recognizes trails and bike lanes as necessary for comprehensive transportation planning.
Virginians who like to get out on their bikes and feet have a friend in Richmond: the Department of Transportation.
Wake up and smell the fiscal disaster
The head of the Government Accountability Office rightly warns of pending economic doom.
U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has launched a fiscal wake-up tour, and although the topic is scary -- mounting U.S. debt resembles a financial black hole from which we might not escape -- so far his only groupies are budget and policy wonks.
http://www.roanoke.com/editorials/wb/wb/xp-89379">Read more.

Comments
[October 31, 2006 9:05 PM]
exasperated : →http://www.questionsforvirgilgoode.blogspot.comLest we forget -- we can all DO something about this mess. Specifically, on Nov. 7.
It's not just David Walker -- economists have been sounding the alarm about profligate fiscal policy ever since the first round of Bush tax cuts in 2001. Under Clinton, our government was running a surplus, slowly retiring the public debt. Now, our government is spending and borrowing like crazy, and the national debt is spiralling out of contol. This is bad for business confidence, and crowds out business investment -- a good explanation for why business investment as a share of GDP has been steadily falling since 2001, and why employment growth is the worst it has been in 40 years.
So these deficits have been strangling job growth, in Southside as everywhere else. And our representatives in Congress have been playing along, cheerfully approving every tax cut or pork-barrel spending increase demanded by the Republican leadership. Virgil Goode and George Allen, part of our rubber-stamp Congress, are part of the problem that David Walker is so urgently bringing to our attention.