On the Bush Budget:

Text and links from the Center for American Progress:

BUDGET

A Blueprint For Fiscal Disaster
This week, the Senate is debating the 2007 budget resolution, a blueprint for how Congress plans to allocate $2.8 trillion in federal spending next year. The federal budget is a concrete embodiment of policy choices, a moral document that reflects the values and priorities of our nation. The budget that the Senate is currently debating runs counter to many of our nation's longest and deepest held beliefs; it prioritizes tax cuts for the rich and wasteful spending in the defense budget while shortchanging veterans benefits, education, health care, energy research, homeland security, housing for the elderly and disabled, and child care for working families. The Washington Post writes, "[I]t's time to pause and consider the unabashed recklessness of the Bush administration's fiscal policies and its unwillingness to alter its tax-cutting course to accommodate new budgetary realities." Indeed, while President Bush and his conservative allies claim their cuts to domestic programs are needed measures to assert fiscal discipline, the reality is that the Senate budget plan would actually increase the deficit over the next five years by $266 billion.

RIGHT WING REJECTS TEST OF FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY:

Recognizing that Congress needs to take action to address Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND) offered an amendment to the budget resolution yesterday that would have imposed greater fiscal restraint. The right-wing rejected the so-called "pay-go" rules, requirements that tax cuts be offset by budget savings or revenue increases in order to prevent the deficit from growing even larger. "For those who say they are fiscally responsible, here is your chance,"
said Conrad. "You are going to be able to prove with one vote whether you are serious about doing something about these runaway debts and runaway deficits or
whether it is all talk." One of those right-wingers who failed to meet the test was Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK). The amendment failed by a 50-50 vote after Coburn, who claims he is willing to make the tough decisions to reform the way the government spends its money, switched his position from a pair of votes last fall. Conrad has pledged to re-introduce the "pay-go" amendment when the
Senate votes to increase the debt limit later this week, and the right wing will
have yet another chance to demonstrate whether it can back up its rhetoric with action.STRIKING THE WRONG BALANCE: The right wing has announced its commitment to repeal the estate tax and make the Bush tax changes permanent. A repeal of the estate tax would cost nearly $1 trillion over the first 10 years of enactment. While a responsible reform could exempt about 99.5 percent of all estates from the tax and avoid the lion's share of costs, alleged "compromises" circulated by Senate Republicans would spend over 90 percent as much as repeal to help this tiny group of wealthy heirs. In all, once made permanent, the tax changes will eventually add over $400 billion to the debt and deliver over $100 billion to the richest one percent of tax payers each year. Bush is also proposing a $439.3 billion defense budget, and $67 billion in emergency funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on top of that. Based on recommendations from American Progress Senior Fellow Larry Korb, progressive lawmakers identified $60 billion in military funding that goes to unnecessary Cold War-era programs that could be spent better elsewhere. To preserve his tax cuts for the rich and his costly defense programs, Bush is balancing the federal deficit on the backs of those who can least afford it. Some marginal spending measures that were recently rejected: $1.5 million for veteran's medical services, $2.8 billion for higher education funding, and $975 million for the widows and orphans of soldiers. Conservatives haven't been willing to march in complete lock-step with the Bush budget, however. Bush proposed cutting $7 billion from education and health care spending, hurting valuable programs that serve our nation's schoolchildren and cutting vital investments in public health, a move that Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) is now pushing to overturn. The Senate has turned back an administration effort to raise $800 million by imposing new fees on veterans for health care. Similarly, Bush proposed cutting $36 billion from Medicare, a move that was also rejected by the Senate. Reflecting on the impact of the budget spending priorities, Specter said, "We have done more than cut the fat. We have done more than cut through the muscle. We have done more than cut through to the bone. We have cut into the marrow. It is that serious."

DIGGING DEEPER INTO DEBT:

Since Bush has been in office, the congressionally-set limit on the total national debt has risen from $5.95 trillion to the current ceiling of $8.184 trillion. "That is more than $28,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in the United States." By this week's end, Congress will likely pass a resolution to dig the hole even deeper, permitting the federal debt to "grow by $781 billion to avoid a disastrous government default." The measure would allow the debt to grow to almost $9
trillion, an increase of $3 trillion since Bush took office. Last year's budget deficit came to $319 billion, the third-largest deficit ever recorded. This year, the deficit is expected swell to $371 billion. Even Bush's newly-appointed Federal Reserve chief recognizes the unsustainable fiscal course that the president has led us down. "The prospective increase in the budget deficit will place at risk future living standards of our country," Ben Bernanke said yesterday. "I am quite concerned about
the intermediate to long-term federal budget outlook."