I drove over to Charlie’s Truck Stop this past week to pick up a few things I need around the house. When I pulled up in front of the gas pumps, Jake did not come right out as he normally does. I glanced through the open doorway and saw he was ringing up groceries for Dolly Ledbedder, so I unscrewed the gas cap and filled the tank myself. When I went inside, Jake looked up and I told him how much gas I had taken and he checked something he has at the counter to verify my numbers and jotted a note on a pad he keeps by the register. All the pumps at the quick stop places around where you serve yourself and the guy inside takes your money have readouts to tell the attendant how much gas is used at each pump so they know if you try to fudge on them. This is probably a good idea as there are so many people getting gas and most of those places have several gas islands. When Jake had the old pumps out front, there were no fancy electronic readouts to verify the amount from inside. Of course, if Jake didn’t believe what you told him, he could always step to the door and check the amount for himself. Far as I know, no one ever tried ti lie to Jake about how much gas they took except for one politician from McNairy County who stopped by several years ago and, when Jake called his hand, he said he had made an honest mistake in reading the numbers. I don’t think Jake believed him, but there was no future in making an issue of it. The politician paid what he owed and Jake says he never showed up again. Jake never got the man’s name.

I spoke to Dolly as she was gathering up her groceries. Then Jake and I helped her carry her bags out to her car. Jake carried on about how fine the weather was and I kept my mouth shut. Jake is a professional conversationalist and I do my best work listening. Dolly drove off and I followed Jake back inside. We passed some conversation and I told Jake I would like some of his thick sliced cheese. He grinned real big and hustled off to slice up a half pound for me.

The Reverend Johnson was over by the pot belly stove with Hermann Spencer and Ronnie Clayton. Willard Smith was also there as was Fred Harbin. Fred is our token political liberal in the area and he doesn’t normally hang around Charlie’s very much where most of the old guys are card carrying conservatives. For his political failings, Fred is a right fine person and everybody in the community likes him. They just mostly don’t agree with his politics. As a general rule, when Fred comes around, conversations tend toward the weather or the size of Mister Crawford’s tomato crop. Mister Lawrence Crawford grows the biggest and best tomatoes around. But this day, as I was making my way toward the pot belly stove, I heard a hint of politics in the air and I wondered how Fred had let himself be drawn into a conversation in which he was so outnumbered. The talk was on the National Deficit and Fred was bragging how Bill Clinton had built up a national surplus in his term as President to the tune of some 236 billion dollars. Then George W. Bush came in and immediately squandered that surplus away to where the most recent figures Fred has seen show the deficit at more than 300 billion and, even though the Bush Administration keeps making noises about turning those figures around, the deficit keeps growing with no end in sight. Fred thinks that, if George W. Bush serves out the remainder of his second term, the country could be bankrupt before he leaves office.

The Reverend Johnson asked Fred what he was talking about when he said there was a surplus in the Clinton Administration. The National Debt increased during Clinton’s term in office some $1,200 billion. That is not exactly a surplus. What Clinton managed, and the Reverend has his doubts that the Clinton Administration had any more to do with the highly publicized prosperity than George W. Bush had to do with any downturn, was to collect more revenue in a fiscal year than the government spent. Mostly politicians taking credit for the economy is akin to a rooster taking credit for the sunrise. Politicians generally take a lot of credit for something they have no control over. On the other hand, they get the blame when things go sour and that is also generally beyond their control. Again like the rooster, when the sun goes down you don’t hear much crowing.

Ronnie said all you hear now when the financial state of the country is mentioned is the state of the deficit. You don’t hear the real issue which is the national debt. Ronnie looked up the national debt on the web recently and the number was so huge, with so many digits and commas, it took him a while to decide how to read it. The number came to $8 trillion and change and it is still getting larger by the second. There is a little counter on one site that shows how fast the government is spending money and the little spinning numbers can make you dizzy just watching. It requires only a few seconds for the numbers to pass the millions mark. The deficit or surplus you hear so much about is the amount the government takes in over a twelve month period as opposed to expenditures for the same time. The National Debt is the amount the government owes in total. Back when the National Debt began to jump from trillion to trillion mark with alarming regularity, some people began to take notice and politicians got worried, so they stopped talking about the National Debt and began to talk about the annual deficit and surplus so as to make government spending appear less than it is. That’s the kind of cooking the books the guys at Enron were indicted for. When a company executive does that sort of thing, he is a criminal. When a politician does it, he is a responsible fiscal hero. By cooking the books, Bill Clinton was able to claim a surplus in his term, but George W. Bush is no hero. When he came into office, he used Clinton’s cooked numbers to claim tax payers had overpaid and were due a refund. As a consequence, the National Debt, the real debt, has shot up higher and faster than under any President in history.

Fred just grinned as though he was thinking he had come out on the top side of a political argument for once.

END