Bush is now preparing to present a $2.4 trillion budget with increases of up to 10% for military and homeland security spending. As it stands now, the budget deficit, once assumed to be $400 billion, has ballooned to $534 billion, and that only stands to grow. While Bush had predicted the deficit could be shrunk within just a few years, even optimistic projections still leave us with about a $250 billion deficit in 2009–and the extension of tax cuts, not to mention a Mars shot, both proposed by Bush recently, would add even more to that total.

Some say that this is not such a big deal, and babble on about percentage of GDP, but one thing is very real: maintaining the debt is expensive. We paid $375 billion in 2003 just to service the interest on the national debt, and with every year of Bush deficits, that number grows by the tens of billions. We could pay $4 trillion or more over the next ten years in such payments, while the debt itself continues to grow and grow.

And while Bush digs us ever further into debt, Iraq is living up to its designation as a quagmire. We were told that the capture of Saddam Hussein would lead to an immediate increase in guerrilla activity, which would then drop off. Nothing of the sort happened. Attacks in December and January continued as before, with an average of about 50 coalition deaths every month, with no end in sight. January’s death rate, in fact, was higher than any month except for November since the major combat ended. And recent attacks on both military and civilian targets threaten Bush’s timeline of handing back control to a makeshift government on July 1st. And even if that government were to take over, it would not mean the pullout of more than a token number of U.S. troops.

All of this as more and more troops are being held over in Iraq far beyond what they were led to expect, with more and more troops expressing their unwillingness to resign for service–and all the while, Bush finds more and more ways to cut their pay and benefits.

Where is that 7% increase in military spending going? Where did the $87 billion for the wars go? And where will the extra money come from when that $87 billion runs out in early 2005? Since it is after the election, you can bet Bush won’t say anything specific–but raiding your grandkids’ piggy banks yet again is a pretty damn sure bet.