All Intensive Purposes

The problem is that by the next decade, the debt will almost certainly be having substantial negative effects on the economy (primarily through higher interest rates), and will certainly put the government in a poor position to do the borrowing that will be needed to fund the baby boomers retirement (see the Social Security debate here).

On the other hand, as the following chart shows, without the Bush tax cuts these problems would have been non-existent.

// posted by t.s. @ 5:52 PM