.5 Cheers for Bush's Budget ( The GOP outspends Dems on Domestic & Def!)

[papau]

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/editorials/la-ed-budget8feb08.story
EDITORIAL
.5 Cheers for Bush's Budget

February 8, 2005

"The fundamental difference between the two parties is how big the government should be." So says Republican enforcer Grover Norquist. But nearly everybody agrees: Democrats bring big government, Republicans bring small government. It's not true, though.

In the years 1960 through 2002 (the ones listed in the Economic Report of the President), the size of federal government averaged 20.87% of the economy under Republican presidents and 19.58% of the economy under Democratic presidents. Republicans remain the bigger spenders even if you subtract defense, if you start with Reagan instead of Eisenhower or if you assign responsibility with a one-year lag.

When Democrats respond to any Republican budget-cut proposal like robots programmed to express alarm, they reinforce a spendthrift impression that does them terrible political damage, and isn't even true. By and large, they are making that mistake again this week. There is much worth knocking in the fiscal 2006 federal budget President Bush released Monday, but there is also some worth praising.

A president's budget proposal should be judged procedurally, as an accounting document, and substantively, as a concrete expression of the president's political philosophy: Is this document a true measure of the president's intentions, what they will cost and how they will be paid for? And are his intentions for the government worthy?

Whatever Bush may say about his philosophy and his intentions, his budgets have said something different. He is a believer in running the government on borrowed money. He took a huge surplus, turned it into a record deficit and now brags that he is on track to fulfilling his farcically modest year-old promise to cut the deficit by half before he leaves office. Budget experts doubt even this. The new budget, like the last, doesn't include the $80-billion supplement he needs for the continuing war in Iraq. Nor does it contain a penny for his Social Security privatization scheme, which the administration admits will cost billions immediately and trillions soon enough. Bush calls for repeal or reduction of various taxes, then counts on the revenue anyway.<snip>

By contrast, Bush's proposal for a tax credit for builders of affordable homes for people at 80% of the median family income has all the characteristic flaws of the Bush "compassionate conservative" approach: A tax credit is a hidden subsidy and hard to evaluate; the benefit goes directly to someone who is probably very well off (a home builder) in the hope that it will indirectly benefit someone who is not badly off (lower middle class), while housing programs directed at actually poor people are targeted for sizable cuts.

The coming days will see campaigns from groups affected by Bush's proposals, claiming that life as we know it will end (or, possibly, continue — whichever is worse) if he gets his way. Even those with more enthusiasm for government than our president claims should treat these pleas skeptically.

[ClintonTyree]

1. I say, pass the budget as it is written...................

it will be tough for 4 years, everybody will have to suck it up.

However, the Slugs can't blame ANYTHING on the Dems in 4 years when they haven't reduced the deficit one dime, the trade deficit is off the charts (it is already, but even MORE so) and the country is on the verge of a great depression.

Enter the Dems on their white horse, stop all of the insane bush policies from the previous 8 years and get the country back in a direction that is sane. From that moment on, the Dems will be known as the Party that is fiscally responsible. The Slugs will be looked at in scorn and become pariahs.

Screw 'em. They WANT the Dems to put up a big stink so the Slugs can blame everything on them in 06 and 08. Let them dig their own grave with their own greedy hands.

[phantom power]

2. That would bite the Dems later.

The GOP would then be able to say "look! The Dems voted for it too!"

Just like they did to Kerry and the "87 billion".

I agree with the "opposition party" approach. The Dems need to oppose all this stuff, preferably with total party unity. The GOP will call them "obstructionists", but the Dems will be able to run campaigns and say with a straight face that it wasn't *their* fault.