He opened the year with a similar assault on the president's fiscal stewardship, saying Republicans had caused the "most dramatic fiscal deterioration in our nation's history" by enacting Mr. Bush's major tax cut.

For Republicans, it will become more difficult to justify further tax cuts, especially since Democrats are already blaming President Bush's tax cut last year for much of the government's fiscal deterioration.

The point would be to achieve increased short-term demand without causing a level of fiscal deterioration that would, on balance, damage confidence.

A February 2013 paper from four economists concluded that, "Countries with debt above 80 percent of GDP and persistent current-account [trade] deficits are vulnerable to a rapid fiscal deterioration..."

State legislators, upset at the fiscal deterioration of the system, voted last week to assign a trustee to Oakland, making it the first school district in the state to have a trustee imposed on it.

"What we got instead," he said, "was the most dramatic fiscal deterioration in our nation's history."

He drew plenty of attention for his speech that said Mr. Bush and Republicans caused "the most dramatic fiscal deterioration in our nation's history" when they pushed through a 10-year $1.35 trillion tax cut.

Tom Daschle accuses President Bush and the Republicans of having caused the "most dramatic fiscal deterioration in our nation's history."

But now the fiscal deterioration has reached catastrophic proportions.

At current trends of fiscal deterioration, interest coverage would slip to 2.5:1 by 2002.