Newsday Editorial: An ocean of red ink

[tk2kewl]

An ocean of red ink
Bush’s budget doesn’t add up: How can it spend more, tax less, cut deficit?

President George W. Bush released his $2.57-trillion 2006 budget yesterday, making this the appropriate time for a fiscal reality check. With Washington on course for a record deficit in 2005, one that topped a record deficit in 2004, Bush's plan for the future is to increase spending while pushing to make revenue-sapping tax cuts permanent.

Logic says that's a formula for a long, deep river of red ink. But administration officials blithely predicted again yesterday that they will halve the deficit by 2009. There's a certain stubborn unreality afoot on Pennsylvania Avenue.

The administration's 2006 spending plan left some significant costs off the table. It included no money for war and reconstruction in Iraq, for instance. And although Bush says he wants to keep the Alternative Minimum Tax from slamming increasing millions of middle-income Americans with higher tax bills, there was no provision in the budget for the revenue loss that would result from an effective fix.

<snip>

The rub is, there will be little gain. Even if Bush manages to get his cuts through Congress - a dubious proposition at best - they would not save much money, only $20 billion, a relative drop in an ocean of red ink.

In the long term, Bush wants desperately to make his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent and to carve private investment accounts out of Social Security, proposals that would cost additional trillions of dollars. It just doesn't add up.

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpbud084138293feb08,0,2011996.story?coll=ny-editorials-headlines

[FloridaPat]

1. How the deficit will be halved in 2009 - Democratic president.

Interesting that there will be no accounting until after the next presidental election. What a farce. Halve the deficit??? From what number? He keeps making record deficits every year, so which year will it be halved from?

[applegrove]

3. It will be halved by stealing from SS! From sales taxing the middle class

It will be halved by stealing from SS! From sales taxing the middle class to death when tax reform takes place. That way no a single, itty, bitty, underpaid, illegal will get away with not paying any taxes. And all the rich will.

As you were!

[TexasLawyer]

2. kick n/t

[The Zanti Regent]

4. It doesn't matter. JESUS is coming back in a week or 2!

Why he's at the Alpha Centauri rest stop having a cup of coffee with Michael Landon. When he finishes, he'll climb back into that Mercedes SUV of his and head for Earth to rapture his rich white Christian Nazi pals!