The American economy has always been unpredictable. As it is constantly impacted by innumerable factors, our economic future is anything but certain-economists rarely agree on what's happening now, let alone on what's to come. In such a complex situation, it makes me uneasy when President Bush basically declares "mission accomplished" with regards to our economy, especially without numbers to back him up. If anything, we should be ready to deal with future problems, and I contend that Bush is not.

I call the President unprepared principally because of our deficit. Now, with the deficit totaling 4.2 percent of the national gross domestic product (GDP), our government's hands are somewhat tied should a national economic catastrophe occur. This is ironic for a president who has made national security such a principle issue. President Bush's deficit may be the greatest danger to our country in the event of a large-scale terrorist attack since the government could collapse fiscally in the face of hundreds of billions of dollars that would be necessary to combat a major strike.

President Bush currently boasts a plan to cut our national deficit in half within four years, but I am somewhat skeptical of this claim. In the President's 2002 State of the Union address, he predicted "our budget will run a deficit that will be small and short-term, so long as Congress restrains spending and acts in a fiscally responsible manner." Congress can hardly be blamed, since President Bush never vetoed a major spending bill.

Furthermore, the Bush administration's calculation of the cost of the Medicare Prescription Drug Improvement and Modernization Act of 2003 was $100 billion too low, but the administration didn't correct its figures until after the bill passed Congress. Also, when President Bush ran for office in 2000, he boasted that he would give Americans a tax cut and put the price tag for America at $1.3 trillion, yet a bipartisan Congressional Joint Tax Committee said they'd really cost $2.5 trillion. Bush spent the surplus he inherited on the tax cuts anyway, which has resulted in a deficit that sets a record in dollar amount. There are clearly politics behind the Bush administration's numbers, and I see no reason to trust this budget prediction, given the number of other predictions that proved to be misleading, if not blatantly wrong, throughout his administration.

I am also skeptical because these budget calculations provide for no additional money to be spent on Iraq or Afghanistan, and they certainly don't provide for the long list of ideas that George Bush put forth in his nomination acceptance speech (when he wasn't attacking Senator Kerry's voting record). Several of these plans could easily cost more than a trillion dollars each over 10 years. And pointing this out is not "pessimism," regardless of what the Republicans say.

John Kerry offers us a much more realistic plan to cut the deficit. The tax cuts passed by the administration will remain in place for anybody making less than $200,000 a year (98 percent of Americans). People making more will have to go back to their previous tax rates. This will retain half of the money spent on President Bush's tax cuts, or at least $200 billion dollars of badly needed cash. This progressive tax also makes sense since we haven't had such a small percentage of people controlling such a large percentage of the wealth since Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation.

Fiscal conservatives would argue that this tax increase would halt the "trickle down" growth that is vital to Bush's supply-side economic policy. However, due principally to outsourcing, trickle-down economics has resulted in a mostly jobless recovery and is unlikely to help the American economy on the whole.

Furthermore, with regards to outsourcing, Senator Kerry is promoting action, while the Bush administration is not. Kerry would put tax incentives in place for companies that would encourage, if not force, them to keep jobs in the United States. Under President Bush, the tax code actually encourages companies to outsource jobs, and the president has no plan to change that. John Kerry would also create additional tax incentives for job-creating companies, but you'll have to go to for the details.

The argument over the economy can be somewhat reduced to "who do you believe?" While I can't prove that George W. Bush's claims are incorrect and the economy isn't just about to rebound, I believe John Kerry's plans are far more realistic and are, simply put, better for America.

But if you're still unconvinced, I would suggest that you act on the quote "history often repeats itself." As governor of Texas, Bush inherited a $6 billion surplus and spent it on a tax cut very similar to the one he has passed as president, with a lot of money going to the wealthy based on the idea that money would trickle down to bolster the economy. He claimed Texas would "never miss the money." Currently, Texas faces a $10 billion deficit and my home school district in Austin, Texas-which closed an elementary school due to a lack of funds-and many other financially weak districts across Texas indeed miss that money. In a state where legislators are in a dead heat with Mississippi for the title of last in government spending on public welfare, deficits are a major problem, and not likely to go away soon.

Senator Kerry recently put it very well himself, pointing out that despite the fact that 11 presidents before Bush have presided over international crises, wars and recessions, Bush is the only one who has presided over a loss of jobs, the only one who has seen declining real exports and the only one who has piloted such a vast swing from a projected surplus to a record deficit. Economically, America can clearly do better, and Senator John Kerry is the man with a plan to make it happen.