Bush, Boxed in by Deficits, to Propose Lean Budget

[ze_dscherman]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Boxed in by a record $521 billion deficit, President Bush will propose a $2.4 trillion election-year budget on Monday that will cut dozens of government programs and set deficit-reduction goals that even fellow Republicans are skeptical he can meet.

SNIP

But fiscal conservatives in both parties have doubts Bush can deliver. He will leave out of his fiscal 2005 budget the tens of billions of dollars that will almost certainly be needed next year to keep U.S. troops in Iraq, as well as a costly tax system overhaul that Republicans and Democrats say will soon become politically imperative to keep taxes from rising on the nation's middle class.

In line with Bush's election-year priorities, homeland security and the military will be the budget's biggest winners. Defense contractors including Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Northrop Grumman Corp., Raytheon Co. and General Dynamics Corp. stand to benefit as Bush's $401.7 billion military budget sharply increases spending on missile defense and on modernizing the Army.

The biggest losers will be environmental, agricultural and energy programs. Facing the prospects of a revolt by fiscal conservatives, Bush will call for limiting growth in discretionary spending -- outside of homeland security and defense -- to just 0.5 percent. Because that is well below the rate of inflation, it will amount to a cut in domestic programs.

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4259244


On edit: Financial Times gives a better title:
Bush's budget 'will not control deficit'

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281468623&p=1012571727102

[retread]

1. Like the invasion of Iraq, this was the plan all along.

*

[leftchick]

2. bush*'s Budget "Will Not Control Deficit'....

here is the FT article I was about to post....

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1073281468623


<Out-of-control spending is the worry of the moment in Washington.

Congressional officials revealed last Thursday that recently passed reforms to Medicare, which include a prescription drug benefit, will cost around $540bn (?436bn, £298bn) over 10 years rather than the original $400bn.

This is an embarrassing revision just a couple of months after the bill was passed, though it is not a dramatic addition to a 10-year budget deficit that the Congressional Budget Office already conservatively estimates at $1,900bn. The White House says this budget is the one that will mark a turnround in both the deficit and the growth of spending.

Proposed overall discretionary spending - outside mandatory programmes such as Social Security and Medicare - will rise by 4 per cent. With defence rising by 7 per cent and homeland security by 10 per cent, this leaves less than a 1 per cent increase for the rest of the discretionary budget - including education, health, job training and employment, housing programmes and environmental protection.

Even within this total, budget experts say, some sectors such as education are likely to rise by more than 1 per cent, given Mr Bush's rhetoric about supporting education. This implies that elsewhere in the budget there will be big cuts.

Bill Beach, a fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington, says such cuts will have an important symbolic component. "The president has a political point to make which may be more important than the fiscal impact," he says.

Many conservative Republicans have been appalled by the rapid rises in federal spending in recent years. "By controlling spending on things like the EPA and the Labor department, he can bring back angry Republicans into the fold," Mr Beach says.>

.....omg, this is frightening!

[Buns_of_Fire]

3. Increases in missle-defense funding

My, my, what a surprise. "Star Wars" refuses to die.

Oh, by the way, numnutz -- the terraists aren't lobbing missles at us. :eyes:

[harper]

4. All according to plan, my dears

What a surprise. Budget deficits force the administration to cut spending for environmental and energy programs. This is exactly what they had in mind from the get go. As far a agricultural programs...well those poor farmers get it in the rear every time. I wonder why they keep voting Republican, but they do. Therefore, I never feel too sorry for them when the folks they vote into power turn around and shaft them. Harsh, but true.

[UpInArms]

5. leaving out the cost of maintaining a force in

Iraq?

So when in *Co going to announce that he needs another $87 billion for another year of his illegal war?

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Lean budget, hah!!!

The news report I heard this morning talked about a 7% increase in the Pentagon's budget and reductions elsewhere.

Considering the size of the Pentagon budget already, the dollar amount of that 7% increase is probably more than a lot of countries spend on their entire military budgets.

[w4rma]

7. Spending will still go up and revenues will still go down. Bigger deficit.

Economic collapse of the United States in the near future.

[Just Me]

8. Ahem, Cheney says Reagan proved deficits don't matter!!!

Just put lots and lots of money in the pockets of our energy and arms dealin' buddies, slash all programs intended to strengthen the common folks, pay unfettered tribute to the rich and the corporations through tax cuts and subsidies et al., and frivolously spend on all kinds of stupid stuff to maintain the "base". Voila', the neocon economic strategy defined.

[mbperrin]

9. The biggest budget and the biggest deficit in the history of the

world for all time is LEAN?

Wow!

[The_Casual_Observer]

10. Bush is a simpleton, none of this matters to him

For Bush, it is all abstract. Why should he care? He figures that he will be reelected in a landslide, since they are probably planning to do another tax cut right before the election.

[reprobate]

11. We must recognize that this isn't bush.

Georgie "Little Boots" Bush is incapable of planning a budget. We all know this. The new budget, like the last budget, was constructed by the neocons. Remember, their goal is to 'shrink the govenment until we can drown it in the bathtub'. In other words, remove all taxes and regulations from corporations.