On the road to bankruptcy, we’ve passed the point of no return. We’re over the top. The Bush administration borrowed $94.4 billion in October and as of the 18th of November the national debt has gone up another $55.7 billion. That’s a total of $150 billion in less than seven weeks or more than $21 billion a week, three billion a day weekends included.

By an overwhelming majority, the Senate just approved a $492 billion Pentagon defense budget for 2006, the fiscal year that we’re already into without an agreed budget and operating on “continuing resolutions” or the elements and allocations of last year’s budget. It was just a few years ago that the media was in a panic and talking about government shutdowns because of conditions like this, but today there’s not a peep from our so-called watchdogs.

At this rate, we’ll hit the statutory debt limit in January and there’s no way for the Secretary of the Treasury to stall it this  time because half of the annual interest payments to entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, and the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) are all due in December. These “interest” payments do not require any real money because it’s simply a matter of dumping more bogus bonds into trust funds for your kids to buy back (the most heinous part of the pay-it-again Sam scam), but it does dramatically increase the nation’s debt.

Last year, $87.6 billion was added to the Social Security trust fund alone by dumping more nonmarketable bonds into its account and calling it accrued interest. Now standing at $1.8 trillion, this year’s interest will top 90 billion with no one to pay off this debt except the same taxpaying public that provided surpluses in the first place. And people wonder where Enron learned its tricks.

To top it all off, Congress wants to be praised for voting to cut discretionary spending some fifty billion dollars over the next five years. That breaks down to about ten billion a year or two percent of the deficit they plan to run this year. Once you add in the money “borrowed” (stolen) from Social Security, this 2006 deficit is almost a half trillion. A two percent cut, isn’t that frugal?

It’s all a colossal joke that would bring tears to the eyes of any clown. Planning a budget so far over expected receipts is not the kind of fiscal responsibility Americans should expect and demand from their elected representatives. Congress certainly doesn’t deserve accolades for biting (tasting?) the bullet.

After being shot down in Argentina and Brazil on his South American free trade initiative, President Bush rushed off to Japan and China on what’s being billed as a push for human rights, religious freedom, democracy, and the protection of Taiwan – an island where we sheltered our old ally Chang Kai Chek and his entourage when they were ousted and an island still technically a Chinese territory. Guantanamo without a lease agreement.

It’s much more likely that Bush was on his knees begging them to loan us more money and not cash in the hundreds of billions they now hold in legitimate marketable and cashable treasuries. These are the same nations that some time ago warned us to get our financial house in order and are in a position to pull the rug of bankruptcy at any time they tire of our blatant aggressiveness.

In other words, it’s probable that the leaders of these Asian countries politely told Bush to go home and take care of his own people rather than trying to advise them.

At home, a category three hurricane should not have caused the damage it did to New Orleans . In the same season, we had two other major category three hurricanes that didn’t devastate entire cities on the same Gulf Coast. But Katrina, a storm that presented her “soft side” to Louisiana, caused the levees to fail after she passed over the Crescent City “bowl” with sustained winds NOAA reported at 95 miles per hour. Roofs weren’t blown off houses like they were in cities above sea level, but the levees that were supposed to withstand a category three storm broke and caused tremendous flooding resulting in severe damage and the displacement of almost a half million people that broadcasters hesitate to call refugees.

President Bush talks a great game when he promises to rebuild the Gulf Coast in “the greatest reconstruction effort the world has ever seen,” but who is going to pay for it, is it worth the cost, and how can we afford this while conducting a huge military operation in the Middle East and finally trying to do something about our broken borders?

So far, it doesn’t look like much of the money Bush has recently borrowed is finding its way into New Orleans or the hands of its former residents. The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), that always was the largest flood insurer, has already run out of money and will probably default or make minor settlements on the policies held by those who were able to afford the high rates of this insurance. Neither have they provided the promised trailers; temporary dwellings that every homeowner in New Orleans was supposed to be able to live in while rebuilding their houses; and trailers that are hardly the thing to provide in a hurricane zone.

Like every other insurance company, FEMA was supposed to pay flood benefits from the premiums they’ve been charging people for years. That money was supposed to be invested wisely or held in trust where it might at least be gaining interest. But there is no FEMA or flood insurance trust fund, real or unreal. What it looks like is that the money collected for years has been spent elsewhere just as your supplemental retirement money has been spent on wars, invasions, and so forth.

Add in the major corporations like General Motors who haven’t left the country to survive and are now closing plants, cutting wages, and turning their health and pension plans over to the government to handle – plus rising energy costs in the face of winter heating – and you’ve got all the makings of a poor holiday retail sales season and a quagmire in our own country.

All while Washington twiddles its thumbs, appoints committees, plays party politics, condones torture, tries to determine who snitched on a spy, and whether our president and his cohorts lied to us about Saddam Hussein or were the victims of faulty information, plus not doing their job of regulating big business, allowing mergers that run out small local businesses, and generally trying to eliminate the middle class that made this country unique.

“Proud to be Union” industrial workers should be asking what their unions have done for them lately because it looks like the unions, in order to support and continue their own bureaucracies, are off supporting teachers and government workers or those who don’t seem to have been doing their jobs very well. More than 70 percent of AFL membership is now composed of government workers. And the majority of American workers are afraid of losing their jobs.

We’re already bankrupt, both morally and financially. We’re just living in the various stages of delusion and denial.