100 billion to buy a neocon wet dream

Parliament's budget officer Kevin Page says the federal government will rack up between $46 billion and $105 billion in new debt over the next five years, even without new stimulus spending in Tuesday's budget.

To repeat, before the Harper government spends dollar one on the planned auto bail out, before the government even proposes their forthcoming recovery budget in Parliament next week, the conservatives are heading towards a 100 billion dollar deficit.

As pointed out by the CNEWS article that basically wipes out all the payments made over the last 11 years by the preceding Liberal governments to reduce our national debt. Of course during the election Harper and Flaherty told us that the that government would avoid a deficit and in fact produce a $100 million surplus by March end.

So how did the conservatives turn Canada’s fortunes around so quickly...

The government hastily added the second 1% reduction to the GST (basically a 16% reduction in sales tax revenues) and then spent money like drunken sailors (no offense to our navy, Willy supports the troops and alcoholics) trying to buy votes in the various regions of Canada.

For example, look at the expenditures here for the month of May of this year. The Harper government spent, granted, promised and gave away over a billion dollars to various regions of Canada in May alone. This happened every month in varying degrees right up to and in fact even during the last election. And all the while Harper and Flaherty knew that Canada was about the follow the US into a recession in 2009.

So why do it...

Well in the short tern Harper could of got his majority government in his hastily called election, but in the long term he could finally eliminate the dreaded socialist state.

A bankrupt federal government would have to sell off it’s assets like the CBC and remove itself from nuclear power generation. A bankrupt country would have to reduce the social security net, further cutting funding to the socialist interests groups, women’s rights, the arts, the unemployed, the homeless. A bankrupt Canada could no longer afford to support universal healthcare.
If four short years of unabated financial mismanagement, Harper could transform Canada into his version of the northern neoconservative wet dream.

And so where do we sit now...

This same government who has spent the last three months pretending to act surprised about the impeding downturn and lamenting about how they regret having to spend more money is about to continue with their plan to transform Canada into their version of a free market state.

What we are going to do is what we've been asked to do by Canadians from coast-to-coast. We are going to address Canada's needs at a time of global recession. Canada needs some spending on the stimulus side... and that will result in a substantial deficit, Flaherty said.

This is not the government that Canadians should rely on to manage the recovery. This government needs to be replaced, before they can do more damage to our country.

As one economist reported in the article, “the economy will show growth in the last quarter of 2009, but won’t return to full capacity until 2013. Can you imagine what Canada under Harper will look like by then?



JAWL