November 7, 2004 - Sooner or later the bill comes due. It always does. For a while you can put one thing off and pay another but the balance you put off just gets bigger. We have been doing that with energy prices. When the price of gas peaked in September so did consumer spending and so did consumer reliance on plastic as we slid cards in to the “pay at the pump” slots on the way to the grocery store. It was all so convenient. We cussed at the number on the credit card receipt and went on about our business. When the bill came in October we winced, paid the minimum monthly payment and moved on while the finance charge was tacked onto the price at the pump.

Suddenly it is November and the statement is coming in the mail. The balance will be higher, the finance charge will be higher, and the minimum payment will be a bigger bite out of the paycheck. The miracle of compound interest has made the price of that gasoline you burned getting to work in September just a little higher yet and the credit available on the account just that much lower.

You are not alone. The grocery company and the department store have been playing the same game with their budgets. They have been hoping that the price of crude oil and all the prices that flow from that basic commodity will be a temporary aberration and a “correction” will be soon. With goods on the shelves and the Christmas shopping season spending spree just over the next hill they have held the line on prices and have delayed passing the cost of running the trucks and lighting their stores on to the customers. They are counting on sales volume to pay the bills even though the bottom line will be that much smaller. But January and February are just over the hill too. Cold and darkness means that the bill for heat and light goes up and up in a normal year. Just like you and me commerce has been footing the energy bill with borrowed money and the payments on the loans will soon come due.

We talk about the price of regular at the pump and the problems it poses for an American family that faces the sharp increase in the cost of getting the kids to school and their parents to work when the paychecks haven’t gotten any bigger. We don’t talk about the cost of getting ammunition to Fallujah or MREs to Samara or another gunship sortie in Iraqi skies. Just like American businessmen and American consumers America has been footing that bill with borrowed money and the limit on the credit card has been reached. The Treasury will ask the lame duck Congress to increase that limit on Monday so that the Administration can borrow the money to pay the $75 Billion it will cost to run the war next year.

Exxon-Mobil and Texaco-Chevron swell their bottom line with record setting profits while United Airlines and the rest of the Airline industry tell their employees that the pension plans they counted on to share in the miracle of compound interest just have to go – sucked up by the fuel pump along with the jet fuel. The administration keeps borrowing the money pay to oil companies to top off the Strategic Oil Reserve at $50 a barrel. Those bills are going to come due soon.

The elections are over and John Kerry and the Democratic Party lost. They don’t have to deal with the problem of how to pay the bills. The elections are over and the treasured tax cut are secure, privatization of the Social Security System is barreling down the legislative road; a more conservative reactionary Federal Court system is on the way. George Bush has won all that but he and the Republicans also won the stack of unpaid bills gathering dust in the corner of the oval office and they are coming due.