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February 08, 2005
Budget, Shmudget! It Not MY Money That's Being Wasted
"The era of big government is over," Bill Clinton disingenuously declared during his presidency.
"President Putting 'Big' Back in Government" declares a headline in the L.A. Times today. Writes Janet Hook:
Even as President Bush proposes significant cuts in healthcare, farm subsidies and other domestic programs, his new budget makes one thing clear about the legacy of his first term in the White House: The era of big government is back.
Bush's $2.57-trillion budget for 2006, if approved by Congress, would be more than a third bigger than the 2001 budget he inherited four years ago. It is a monument to how much Republicans' guiding fiscal philosophy has changed over the 10 years since the GOP's Contract With America called for a balanced budget and abolition of entire Cabinet agencies.
No longer are Republicans arguing with Democrats about whether government should be big or small. Instead, they are at odds over what kind of big government the U.S. should have.
Another Times story puts the lie to Bush's claim to be halving the deficit in five years:
It is the 2004 deficit that Bush is promising to cut in half, but he's not starting with the actual 2004 deficit of $412 billion.
Instead, his benchmark is the projected $521-billion deficit that his Office of Management and Budget estimated a year ago, when the fiscal year was four months old. Using half of that figure, Bush's goal is to reach a deficit of $260.5 billion.
If Bush were to start with the actual 2004 figure, his goal would be a deficit of $206 billion — $54.5 billion more.
There are more twists. Bush proposes to cut the deficit in half not in dollars but as a share of the economy. If the economy grows, as is projected, then the deficit will decline as a share of the economy even if it does not shrink by a single dollar.
The 2004 deficit was 4.5% of the economy. So in fiscal 2009 it must be 2.2% or less. That is exactly the average share of the last 43 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Finally, the budget that the president will send to Congress will, like his past budgets, omit some major deficit-raising items.
Among those "major deficit-raising items" are defense spending, expected to be requested in a supplemental bill (the last one was for $80 billion), and the cost of Bush's Social Security "reform," which Dick Cheney admitted will be $754 billion over 10 years (and, as we all know, government estimates are usually well below the final tab) and trillions more after that.
Oh, yes. Our conservative, tax-cutting president has also submitted a budget which hikes the "security fee" on airline tickets 120 percent (and that's on each flight segment), from $2.50 to $5.50, a surefire way to help an already troubled industry go down the toilet even faster. Won't passengers just love paying three bucks more per leg of their flight in order to cover the salaries of the glowering TSA employees who frisk little old ladies and strip search attractive young ones?
I'm certainly glad we didn't get a lying, deceiving, tax-raising Democrat in the White House this term!
Posted by Mike Tennant at February 8, 2005 04:29 PM
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