DC, say what you will. There was money. Now there's not. The former administration admitted that they based their strategy on false intel that Saddam's WMDs already existed and we had to topple him to stop their use. Then the rhetoric changed to, "Well he WILL get them and use them." So, what you consider correct, I consider backpedaling.

And I am certainly not trying to lay blame. The mess exists. The President is doing his best to clean it up. You asked where we could get the money for these projects that I suggested. I simply gave my opinion on why we didn't have any federal money for these suggestions.

Here are the numbers on the national debt from a CBS News report from September, 2008. The bold and italics are mine.

On the day President Bush took office, the national debt stood at $5.727 trillion. The latest number from the Treasury Department shows the national debt now stands at more than $9.849 trillion. That's a 71.9 percent increase on Mr. Bush's watch.

Amid concerns that President Bush's bailout would raise the debt even more:
Buried deep in the hundred pages of bailout legislation is a provision that would raise the statutory ceiling on the national debt to $11.315 trillion. It'll be the 7th time the debt limit has been raised during this administration. In fact it was just two months ago, on July 30, that President Bush signed the Housing and Economic Recovery Act, which contained a provision raising the debt ceiling to $10.615 trillion.

And it's even higher today. It took a long time to create this mess, and it's going to take several years to get back on our feet, far longer than people thought it would take. What upsets me is that I think the economy was getting back on track. I think that the current oil prices will derail some of that. Heating homes (at least it's almost the end of winter) and prices at the pump are going to eat up a lot of disposable income. So much still gets delivered by truck in this country that we're going to see food prices increase, so restaurant prices will increase. Airlines have already announced increases.

All these little things will add up to another dip in consumer confidence. And that's the last thing we needed right now.