The president’s budget is ‘disconnected from reality’

February 5, 2007

It’s Budget Day in Washington, as the White House unveiled a brand new $2.9 trillion spending plan, which, according to the Bush gang’s rhetoric, will set the nation on course for a balanced budget by 2012. So, how’s it look? Take a wild guess.

Bush’s spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government’s big health care programs — Medicare and Medicaid — over the next five years.

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush’s presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

“The president’s budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said, “I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either.”

To help underscore that last point, the AP notes that New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the president’s budget faces a bleak future.

There’s plenty to discuss here, but let’s stick to two main areas: funding for the war and Bush’s spending cuts. One’s dishonest, and the other’s ridiculous.

First, war spending. As the AP noted, “The Bush budget includes just $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2009 and no money after that year.” That’s not a typo — spending for Bush’s wars is supposed to drop to zero by 2010.

It’s all well and good to talk about the Defeatocrat plans, what with their regional redeployments and plans to retain skeletal civic support and special forces in Iraq, but if you want some real anti-war sentiment, you got to check out the new Bush administration budget projections:

“Their request, for the first time, attempts to show the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming fiscal year, $145 billion, but includes just $50 billion for fiscal 2009 and nothing thereafter.” […]

So in fiscal year 2010, the Bush administration is officially projecting that we will not have one troop, not one civil servant, not one installation or falafel receipt or Halliburton disbursement in Iraq or Afghanistan. There will be a total withdrawal, with absolutely no associated or lingering costs. Or, at the least, the administration will request, and expects Congress to grant, a complete cutoff of all funding for the war.

Or, you might say that maybe the White House is playing more budget games, and still trying to obscure the cost of the war.

And second, there are the administration’s priorities.

The president’s budget would also reduce spending for Medicare and Medicaid, the federal government’s health programs for the elderly and the poor, by about $100 billion over five years. And it would provide insufficient extra cash to maintain coverage for poor children currently enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Democrats blasted those proposals, noting that the Republican-controlled Congress last year did not approve much smaller reductions in federal health-care spending.

“Rather than trying to solve our health care crisis by lowering costs and covering more people, the President’s plan will make the crisis worse by raising costs and failing to cover those who need it most — our nation’s children,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said yesterday in a statement.

That’s true, but tax cuts for billionaires would be fully protected and made permanent, so it’s the kind of plan Republicans can embrace, right?

Honestly, I have a hard time guessing why the White House even bothered to come up with this document. It’s based on a series of absurd and overly-optimistic expectations, unpassable spending cuts, deceptive war budgets, and unaffordable tax cuts. It gives smoke and mirrors a bad name.

As Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad put it, “With their track record, everything they present is going to be viewed skeptically. Because they’ve been deceptive year after year after year.” This year, alas, is no different.

One’s dishonest, and the other’s ridiculous.

What else can we expect from a President who’s both?

  • Isn’t the next President responsible for the details of the 2010 budget? If so, maybe they’re just assuming that Hillary will stop the war when she gets elected in 2008. The rest of this budget certainly works to make that assumption valid.

    You gotta love the taking money away from sick children and grandmas to give it in tax cuts to Paris Hilton and Lee Raymond. I’m sure someone at AEI is busy working up the story on how that builds a stronger society because it teaches poor children to “take ownership” of their healthcare early.

  • I heard a Bush soundbite today where he condemns timetables for Iraq as “mixed messages” that will embolden the troops. Seems like a budget that hints at complete withdrawal by 2010 sends just such a message. Unless he’d care to admit that the long-range projection is s sham.

  • Okay, so we have this really huge deficit, and we’re going to take in hundreds of billions less than before, while spending 2-point-9 trillion—and this will balance the budget? If my dog were as foaming-at-the-mouth mad as this president is, I’d have to shoot it….

  • It’s a well documented fact that criminals become more brazen over time. This administration has dropped all pretense of even caring to govern.

    “With their track record, everything they present is going to be viewed skeptically. Because they’ve been deceptive year after year after year.” – Kent Conrad

    Shorter Conrad, you can’t even believe these guys ’cause all they ever do is lie.

  • And it would provide insufficient extra cash to maintain coverage for poor children currently enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

    No Child Left Behind. Unless the child is poor. In that case, who gives a damn about the little bastard? But I’m sure the fetus fetishists and Snowflake Baby Protection societies will rise up and condemn El Presidente for his callous approach to needy children. [/snark]

    My money (har) is on this being another bit of Distract-o-vision from the White House. Don’t ask me about how we wound up in Iraq, read this budget and ask me if I’ve been smoking the Optimistic Rug.

  • Cut off Medicare funding to pay for millionaires’ tax cuts. Nice work, Republicrooks! Good luck in the 2008 elections, eh?

    And Bush wants to cut off the money to the troops in 2010? Why wait til 2010, let’s start NOW. Cut off the funds, let them use what they have in the pipeline to come home.

    I came up with an analogy for the Iraq war:

    Bush is an arsonist. He deliberately set fire to an apartment building, and then sent some firemen in to help the people out. But the building is really burning, and it’s looking like it will probably collapse soon, and there are a lot of dead and injured firemen. Bush wants to send in more firemen, and America wants the ones inside the building to be pulled out rather than sacrifice them to a hopeless situation.

    It seems to me that the arsonist should be arrested, and the firemen should be saved to fight other fires. The building was lost when Bush poured the gas and put the match to it, not when the firemen were pulled out.

  • He certainly appears to be pushing the cognitive reality frame of reference out somewhere past the left field bleachers! As part of my pointless attempts at understanding him and community integration, I’m further continuing with my exploitation of the different churches in my village. Because I care! Today I attended seasonal bung service at the Zion Christian Church (ZCC). From what I’ve gleaned from the disinformation of their web site so far, the ZCC pastor has the largest member of all the churches in my village. I believe the ZCC has grey and roan foal origins, related to Gum Legs, which I bet the entire Gardner fortune on in the 5th at Santa Anita, only to end in disappointment whence he slipped on the errant mule muffin left from the previous $10,000 claimer. It’s easy to know who ZCC members are in the community because they all wear a miniature toilet plunger over a small piece of green felt, cut in the shape of their favorite cookie. Both of the General Duty Asses (short for assistants) in my surgical penis clinic are ZCC members. Non-ZCC members are gagged, stripped and forced to engage in the ZCC and their odd rituals, I was warned. Today as the clinic driver was transporting me home, I mentioned ZCC and he laughed. He said that the ZCC do indeed have some odd rituals, among them drinking lots of instant coffee, sticking a metal pipe in their anus to induce diarrhea, listening to “Bob and Ray Show” reruns, and jumping while simultaneously farting and singing. Well, at the service I attended I observed none of these odd rituals except the coffee and the jumping/farting/singing thing. I was especially happy about being left out of the metal pipe to the anus ritual!

  • Self-correction: when I said earlier that “I heard a Bush soundbite today where he condemns timetables for Iraq as “mixed messages” that will embolden the troops,” I meant “embolden the enemy.”

    But it’s funnier the way I had it before.

    The point is, he’s against timetables — so don’t call the budget a timetable.

  • How can we cut taxes when the nation is at war? The burden of Bush’s Global War on Terrorism should not be passed on to our children and grandchildren. Congress must do the right thing and raise taxes to pay for this war or cut spending.

  • For the past quarter century, our government has been taking a hatchet to (what is left of) our social welfare programs, while bestowing a 25-year-long chain of “tax cuts/incentives” on the very wealthy. As a result, we now have the highest rate of infant mortality among all industriaized nations, and the life expectancy for America’s poor has rapidly declined to that of/below Third World levels. Yes, we do leave the poor to die, so that the very rich can be richer.

    Our Founding Fathers said that if our government should one day no longer represent the interests of the people, governing only for the benefit of the ruling class, the American people have a patriotic responsibility to revolt. Do we have the courage to do this?

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