Fiscal Discipline....

Your govenment and mine have none. Zero. Zilch.

There is no accountability, very little done in the way of clean audits (just look at what the Defense Dept. done with their audits) that have made the Budget Office proud.

Greenspan says it best in his new book. Greenspan, 81, ran the Fed for 18 1/2 years and was the second-longest serving chief. He served under four presidents, starting with his initial nomination by Ronald Reagan.

The ex-Fed chief writes that he regrets the loss of fiscal discipline under Bush.

"'Deficits don't matter,' to my chagrin, became part of Republicans' rhetoric."

Greenspan long has argued that persistent budget deficits pose a danger to the economy over the long run.

At the Fed, he repeatedly urged Congress to put back in place a budget mechanism that requires any new spending increases or tax cuts to be offset by spending reductions or tax increases.

Large projected surpluses were the basis for Bush's $1.35 trillion, 10-year tax cut approved in the summer of 2001.

Budget experts projected the government would run a whopping $5.6 trillion worth of surpluses over the subsequent decade after the cuts. Those surpluses, the basis for Bush's campaign promises of a tax cut, never materialized.

"In the revised world of growing deficits, the goals were no longer entirely appropriate," Greenspan noted. Bush, he said, stuck with his campaign promises anyway. "Most troubling to me was the readiness of both Congress and the administration to abandon fiscal discipline."