Whoever is president is going to need trillions

Why in any world would any mammal want the job of leading America during the next four years? Anyone who accepts responsibility and accountability for a job MUST have the resources to make promises happen.

Whether you are king of the world or not, you can't wage war in Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan without money to buy the equipment and pay the troops. That's why Lyndon Johnson sold Franklin D. Roosevelt's Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into the private marketplace in 1969 -- to hold off the wolves calling for an end of the war and pushing to cut off budgets for the troops. You can't fight a war without big money.

Whether you are king of the world or not, you can't fix the sewers, bridges, roads and airports of America without money to hire the ditch diggers. Civil engineers in America have stated that we MUST fix our infrastructure in the next two years or suffer increasing bridge collapses and water supply failures.

Whether you are king of the world or not, you cannot force the medical system to improve the cost, efficiency and efficacy of the medical treatment system charged with care of our Baby Boomers without enough money to completely restructure the health system -- while keeping all our physicians and pharmaceutical companies happy.

Whether you are king of the world or not, when Congress has "helped" American financial institutions by eliminating a rule saying mortgages cannot be bundled and sold like stocks and bonds, you can't reverse time and make the greedy bankers give the money they stole back to Americans.

Whether you are king of the world or not, you can't prevent Dick Nixon from destroying the true value of our dollar by killing the gold standard and allowing our Treasury to print enough fiat money to rocket U.S. debt to $40,000 for every man, woman, child and illegal alien residing in America. And you'd better not be the king of the world that asks American taxpayers to write that check for an average of $150,000 per family -- although SOME president is going to do that. And real soon.

So, you are campaigning hard to be president -- king of the world. You want to take over a system where you have promised to win the wars and restore security, fix the health-care system, repair the infrastructure before our bridges drown us, bail out all the greedy bankers and cut taxes.

Let's see: War = $162 billion per year; infrastructure = $2 trillion over the next four years; health care = $200 billion initially and $65 billion/year; bailouts = $1 trillion over the next two years. Oh yeah, and the legal limitation on the national debt was just raised this week to $11.3 trillion. Let's cut taxes now.

Sure. Let's elect somebody to that job. But, just remember: responsibility with no resources is a formula for failure. And anybody asking for this job is completely insane. I would argue the next president is certifiable.

Skaggs is a former lobbyist for DuPont, Conoco and Consol Coal.

http://www.wvgazette.com/Opinion/Op-EdCommentaries/200810020651