Young and old losers in President's budget

Young and old losers in President's budget
Email Print Normal font Large font By Michael Gawenda Herald Correspondent in Washington
February 8, 2006

GEORGE BUSH proposes to boost defence spending to record levels, while slashing health and education funding.

The US President's $US2.8 trillion ($3.74 trillion) 2007 budget, proposed to Congress on Monday, would increase military spending by 4.8 per cent to $US439 billion, while cutting 141 government programs.

Education, Medicare and the prescription drug program for pensioners are among the areas facing cuts. The military spending does not include the cost of the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, for which Mr Bush has asked for an extra $US50 billion.

Officials admit the final figure sought is likely to be far higher

The Administration has already asked Congress for an extra $US120 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan for this year.

Despite the fact that the budget deficit for this financial year is now expected to reach $US423 billion because of spending on Hurricane Katrina relief and the Iraq war, Mr Bush also proposed tax cuts of $US1.5 trillion over 10 years.

The President said the plan to halve the budget deficit by 2009 was "on track" but economic commentators almost unanimously said it was unlikely this would be achieved. The proposed budget, which will probably be unrecognisable by the time Congress votes on it in October, is more an indication of the Administration's priorities.

"My Administration has focused the nation's resources on our highest priority - protecting our citizens and our homeland," Mr Bush said.

The proposed budget shows that the cost of the Iraq war remains a serious drain on the economy and that government spending can only be kept under control by politically sensitive cuts to health care programs affecting low-income earners and the elderly.

Even if Mr Bush manages to push his budget through Congress more or less intact, the deficit would still be well over $US300 billion.

The proposal to cut $US36 billion from Medicare over the next five years has outraged pensioner groups. Even Republicans admit it will be difficult to get the budget through Congress in a mid-term election year.

The Senate minority leader, Harry Reid, said the proposed cuts were the cost of "the Republican culture of corruption. After creating record deficits and debt with his budget-busting tax breaks, the President is asking our seniors, our students and our families to clean up his fiscal mess."
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/you...074228932.html
Whats the Neo-Con agenda again?

Here's the numbers my friend.

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Bud...m&PageID=93690

If you actually read this information you will see that without a doubt the tax cuts enacted by Bush have nothing to do with this at all.

Tax revenues,IN FACT, have steadily increased during the tax cut period, and have overall more than DOUBLED since 1990.

Nice try though, you make it so easy. You should read the facts before you just vomit back up what Harry Reid told you.lol.

LOL your funny dude. You think just like they want you to think...You cant win man, im telling you people are waking up to this criminal government of ours and nothing you say or do can stop it...

I am winning everyday friend, my new home( that I own),my new car,(that I own)my college education,( that I am paying off) and my sweet job,(that I earned) are proof of that. No help from anyone, I did it without Big Govts. help or moms.

People have been spewing the same line you are for 6 years now. Guess what, W got re-elected with the most votes in American history, so did Blair,so did Howard. That isn't a fluke. Your all talk and no action.

So will you feel the say way about the budgets and the war on terror if hildabeast becomes president.....


Bush 2007 budget quietly omits impact of policies on deficit
02/07/2006 @ 11:58 am
Filed by John Byrne


President George W. Bush's fiscal year 2007 budget quietly omits a table included in previous years which lays out the impact of the Administration's proposed policies on the deficit, RAW STORY has learned.




The missing table was first discovered by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its omission -- a single table among thousands and thousands of pages that follow a standard format each year -- likely signals that the Administration is trying to keep the focus off the massive deficits which the United States will incur after 2010.

Bloomberg News notes that under the 2007 budget, the federal deficit would decline until 2010 and then start rising at a remarkable rate.

"If Congress makes Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, most of the impact won't be felt until after 2011, long after the president has left office," the financial news service writes. "Some of the tax reductions are due to expire at the end of 2008 and the rest in 2010."

The loss of revenue between 2012 and 2016 is projected at $1.2 trillion.

The deficit was resolved for the first time under President Bill Clinton, when the U.S. budget showed a surplus. Since President Bush took office, his tax cuts have reopened the deficit door. Last year's budget deficit was $413 billion.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, in their analysis, posits that the economic cost could be greater after 2011.

"Even these figures for 2011 significantly understate the long-term effect the Presidentâ??s budget would have in swelling the deficit," the Center writes. "Several of the additional tax cuts the Administration is proposing â?? including costly proposals related to health savings accounts and to retirement and lifetime savings accounts â?? are designed such that their costs in the first five or ten years would be substantially smaller than their costs in subsequent decades, when they would lose huge amounts of revenue."

Bush team, critics weigh in on budget

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld defended the budget's increased military spending last week, saying the U.S. must continue to upgrade military spending and resources to ensure America's safety.

"No nation, no matter how powerful, has the resources or capability to defend everywhere, at every time, against every conceivable type of attack," Rumsfeld remarked. "The only way to protect the American people, therefore, is to provide our military with as wide a range of capabilities, rather than preparing to confront any one particular threat."

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) slammed the Administration's budget, echoing a theme Democrats sought to advance in both previous presidential elections, namely that the Republican proposals are predicated on the interests of the rich.

The budget, Clinton said, shows "that the most important thing to this administration are tax cuts being made permanent for the wealthiest of Americans."

Even some Republicans have criticized the depth of the cuts in domestic programs Bush has proposed in order to leave room for military spending and capacious tax cuts. But Bush's team has shrugged off such complaints, saying they are committed to "fiscal discipline."

"This budget represents the president's dedication to fiscal discipline, an efficient federal government and the continuation of a thriving U.S. economy," Treasury Secretary John Snow told the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday.
http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Bush_2...pact_0207.html

YUP, Absolutely. But since she dosen't have a prayer of winning a national election I am not to worried about it. I hope she does run, might as well give us the election.

Bush proposes $2.77 trillion budget
More money sought for defense, cuts in most other areas
By William L. Watts, MarketWatch
Last Update: 3:51 PM ET Feb. 6, 2006


WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- President Bush on Monday sent Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request that would boost defense spending, while trimming Medicare and other government programs even as first-term tax cuts are extended.


The budget request seeks a 2.3% rise in total government spending in fiscal 2007, which begins Oct. 1. The deficit would total $354 billion.

"As this budget shows, we have set clear priorities that meet the most pressing needs of the American people while addressing the long-term challenges that lie ahead," Bush wrote to lawmakers, in a letter accompanying the four-volume, 2,400-page document. "The 2007 budget will ensure that future generations of Americans have the opportunity to live in a nation that is more prosperous and more secure."

Democrats criticized the budget outline as misleading and incomplete, complaining that it fails to adequately account for future war-related spending, efforts to shield middle-class taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax, and the long-term effects of extending Bush's first-term tax cuts.

The White House, meanwhile, expects the government to end the current fiscal year with a deficit of $423 billion -- a record high in dollar terms.

Administration officials say the deficit figure is less onerous when measured as a percentage of the overall economy.

"While this increase in the deficit is unwelcome, at 3.2% of GDP, the projected deficit would be well within the historical range and smaller than the deficit in 11 of the last 25 years," White House Office of Management and Budget Director Joshua Bolten told reporters.

The Bush plan "explodes deficits, but then conceals them by providing only five years of numbers and leaving out large costs, like long-term [AMT] reform and realistic ongoing war costs. The result will be more debt passed on to our children," said Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, the senior Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee.

Defense boost

As previously outlined by administration officials, the White House requested a Defense Department budget of $439.3 billion, up nearly 7% from the $410.8, excluding war-related supplemental spending, in fiscal 2006 outlays.

The budget doesn't fully account for expected costs associated with the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. White House officials last week said war-related supplemental spending would likely top $120 billion in the current fiscal year.

They also added a $50 billion "plug number" to the fiscal 2007 estimate, which deputy OMB director Joel Kaplan said would allow the White House to better guess deficit figures.

Outside of the Pentagon and other security-related spending, the White House targeted 141 programs for sharp cuts or elimination, in a bid to save $14.5 billion in fiscal 2007.

Bush also seeks to cut projected spending on mandatory entitlement programs by $65 billion over five years, with the bulk coming from measures designed to hold down outlays for Medicare, the health-care program for the elderly, by $36 billion through 2011.

Mandatory spending refers to programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, in which outlays are set automatically according to the number of beneficiaries and other factors.

The White House contends that such cuts will help the administration stay on target for reducing the budget deficit to less than 2.25% of gross domestic product by fiscal 2009.

The White House expects the deficit to fall to $354 billion in fiscal 2007, and declining to $208 billion by fiscal 2009. The 2009 figure would be equivalent to 1.4% of GDP, the White House said, leaving Bush on track to meet his goal of cutting the deficit to less than 2.25% of GDP by that date.

But budget watchers warned that the administration has a less-than-stellar record when it comes to its deficit projections.

The Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates a balanced federal budget, warned that previous Bush administration budget forecasts have assumed similar improvements in the deficit outlook that have failed to materialize.

The White House's 2004 budget, for example, projected a $307 billion shortfall that year declining to around $201 billion in fiscal 2006. Instead, the administration forecasts that red ink in 2006 will be more than twice that amount.

Tax battle

The administration's five-year forecast assumes that Congress will extend Bush's first-term tax cuts, which are due to expire in coming years.

Critics charge that the tax cuts will exacerbate the deficit, while the administration argues that further tax relief will help ensure economic growth.

"Many of the administration's critics will argue that we should let the tax relief expire," Bolten said. "A tax increase is the wrong prescription, not only for the nation's economic health, but also for the government's fiscal health. We are not an under-taxed society."

Federal tax receipts declined for three consecutive years at the beginning of the Bush administration, bottoming out at $1.783 trillion in fiscal 2003, or 16.5% of GDP, and marking the first time receipts fell three years in a row since the 1920s.

Tax receipts have bounced back strongly in the last two years amid strong economic growth, edging back up to around 17.5% of GDP in fiscal 2005. The administration forecasts receipts will increase 5.9% annually through 2011.

Budget analysts warn that efforts to trim federal spending, always a difficult task, will likely prove even more challenging ahead of the 2006 midterm elections.

Bush attempted in last year's budget to eliminate or sharply curtail around 154 programs to eliminate $15.8 billion in spending. In the end, Congress agreed to less than half of the proposed cuts.

What's more, the federal budget is set to explode in coming decades as the Baby Boom generation retires, fueling a sharp rise in what is known as entitlement spending, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

But those programs are politically popular, often making even minor cuts difficult to achieve.

Bush's budget warns that unsustainable growth in future mandatory spending represents the greatest threat to the nation's long-term fiscal health.

"The 2007 budget paves the way for additional reforms that will be needed over the long term to bring Medicare's finances in line with available resources," the budget document said.

In 2003, Bush pushed Congress to enact a Medicare prescription drug benefit, which took effect this year. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates net spending for the benefit will rise from $30 billion in the current fiscal year to $155 billion by fiscal 2016.
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/stor...&siteid=google