"What Dubya Isn't Telling Us About His Budget"

[TexasLawyer]

From Capitol Hill Blue

Bush Leagues
What Dubya Isn't Telling Us About His Budget
By DAVID ESPO
Feb 8, 2005, 05:40


President Bush gave faint praise Monday to the deficit-cutting measures contained in his own budget. Not surprisingly, congressional Democrats were far less polite. No wonder on both counts, on a political issue that has often seemed more imagined than real. Bush's claim to cut government red ink in half over five years omits the cost of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq beyond Sept. 30. It reckons, implausibly, that neither he nor the Republicans who control Congress will want new tax cuts in future years.

It underestimates by many billions the money needed for Social Security overhaul. And it assumes that the GOP-controlled Congress will send veterans a new $2.1 billion bill for health care through 2010. It also assumes that lawmakers will acquire discipline when it comes to hometown projects.

If the numbers in Bush's glossy budget book weren't clear enough about administration goals, the president personally supplied the emphasis. "Our priorities are winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland, growing our economy," said the chief executive who seeks increased spending on defense and homeland security, and wants previously enacted tax cuts made permanent. Next, he told reporters at the White House, the budget "focuses on results. ... It's a budget that reduces and eliminates redundancy." That's code for merging some programs, eliminating others and squeezing domestic programs generally.

Finally, Bush got to the deficit, making it fifth in line in his prepared recitation. "People on both sides of the aisle have called upon the administration to submit a budget that helps meet our obligations of - our goal of reducing the deficit in half over a 5-year period, and this budget does just that," he said. If the targets are met, the budget book says, the remaining deficit will be "lower than all but seven of the last 25 years."

As a rousing endorsement, that might rate a 25 on a scale of 1 down to 25.

<snip>

(re the deficit)

"It's a theoretical concept as opposed to a clearcut issue," said David Winston, a Republican pollster. He also suggested deficits were a political stalking horse. "Democrats are interested in the deficit not because of the deficit but because they want to stop Republican tax cuts. And Republicans are focused on the deficit not because they're focused on the deficit but because they want to stop Democratic spending," he said. Independents care more than either Republicans or Democrats about deficits, he said, a concern that was reflected in Ross Perot's emergence in the 1990s.

<snip>

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/printer_6157.shtml

[izzie]

1. Frankly I was getting my personal budget ready to send to him

First he is spending more than we are taking in even before he has to add the rest of the budge to the one he first shows people. It is like a card trick. One budget here we do not have income for and then other budget over their that we have no income for. My advice is let him do your house hold accounts or do not send your child to Harvard for a MBA

[NewYorkerfromMass]

2. The NYTimes was up front today - calls it a "sham"

"....Over all, the budget is a sham that takes big cuts out of politically vulnerable programs that have very little to do with the explosion of the deficit in Mr. Bush's tenure.

Programs benefiting low-income citizens, like community development and health care, are destined to bear close to half of the cuts even though they accounted for less than 10 percent of the spending increases during the first Bush term. Some of the cruelest cuts would affect hundreds of thousands of working poor people who rely on child-care assistance and food stamps.

The deficit problem is a reflection of lowered revenue more than high spending - a fact that the president and the Republicans in Congress are determined to ignore. To the contrary, their proposal is to lock the once-"temporary" Bush tax cuts into stone. Meanwhile, expensive outlays will continue for the Pentagon, homeland security and mandated costs like Medicare. With such a lopsided perspective, vital environmental, education and housing programs cannot help but be disproportionately trimmed.

As a political tract, the budget neatly omits any accounting for next year's costs of the Iraq war, lately running at more than $5 billion a month. Nor do the budget figures for later years mention the hundreds of billions in borrowing that would be required to start up President Bush's plan to allow Social Security taxes to be directed into private investments.

....In the end, only the programs with the least political clout - generally aimed at helping the weakest groups in the country - will be pared down or eliminated. That might give some politicians a sense of political cover, but it would be a bad choice and would hardly solve the problem. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/opinion/08tue1.html?pagewanted=print&position=