With manufacturing of goods decreasing for the seventh month in a row, and unemployment creeping back to normal 1985 levels, our wise and big-eared leader has once again misjudged and sent our robust economy into a bust. Not more than five months ago our government reassured us that the economy would continue to hold and that at their last estimates would create a monstrous $281 billion surplus. Yet, on Tuesday of this past week our government informed us that our economy would only produce a $153 billion surplus.

In April we knew the economy was struggling, most likely because we heard of layoffs, the sagging Dow Jones and the fact that a once-$150 stock was at an all time low of $22. The issue is not the incompetence of Washington as a whole but in our leader. The same man who led the Texas Rangers into ruin, along with past President Bush’s oil company, has begun his destruction of the American people and our economy.

Two years ago we heard two men, one who would have fit in Barnum & Bailey’s circus as the oldest-looking-10-year-old and the other into the Rush Limbaugh show as the wallpaper, discuss how President Clinton’s policy of leaving the weakened Social Security fund alone was a good idea.

Each of them thought of a good name for this Social Security surplus and its container. They called it the “lock box.” We heard months and months of mind-numbing rhetoric on how the “lock box” would not be touched, but even with that surplus locked away there would still be enough money for a tax cut and an increase in spending.

Does this remind you of anything? Hint-“Voodoo.” That’s right, President Ronald Reagan’s famous recessions builder-Voodoo economics. The idea of cutting taxes and increasing spending sounds wonderful. If this is so wonderful, why haven’t you heard about this in your business classes as a good way to run a company?

President Bush states, “For years, politicians in both parties have dipped into the trust fund to pay for more spending. And I will stop it.” Yet, it was President Clinton who began the policy of not dipping into the Social Security surplus three years ago. If you were to put 100 accountants into a room and ask them to create a budget and projections for a company, you would get 45 different answers. Numbers can be manipulated; we all know this, yet our government continually attempts to pull the wool over our eyes by feeding us political propaganda.

I find it hard to believe that our government could not see the slide of our current economy, so to create a fiscally sound budget. But, a fiscally sound budget would not allow President Bush to complete his promises to his fellow oil and military friends.

I want you all to hold President Bush accountable for his statement in May 2000, “all Social Security funds in the surplus must stay where they belong-dedicated to Social Security,” as well as the statement he made August 2001 in which he states there are two types of events that warrant the tapping into Social Security funds: “an economic recession or war.”

We are supposed to believe that the word “recession” can’t be manipulated in the same fashion everything else has that has come from a Texas ranch or a Bush-occupied oval office. It has already begun, President Bush has called for more spending for military and education. President Bush also stated that this $9 billion from Social Security will be an insurance policy against excessive congressional spending, yet he just asked for more spending on his two babies.

We may be in college and only in our early 20s, but unless something drastic happens within the next decade we will be forced to care for our parents, both physically and monetarily. Granted this $84 billion in Social Security surplus may only be 5 percent of the total needed to support the Baby Boomers, but it is better to start with 5% than with zero and try and work your way up.

We all must grow up sometime-this includes our President-and realize that we are not here on this earth only for our current self-preservation but for our future preservation. As our parents’ future goes so does ours.

Tax credits are great if we can afford them. A new pair of shoes is cool too, only if we can afford them. We don’t go asking for an advance from our boss the first week we are on the job. So we shouldn’t expect tax relief for money that is already spent. This money has been spent over the past 100 years and is now in the form of the largest deficit in the world.