Bogus Budgeting
washingtonpost.com
Tuesday, February 3, 2004; Page A18
THE BUSH administration's 2005 budget is a masterpiece of disingenuous blame-shifting, dishonest budgeting and irresponsible governing. The administration mildly terms the $521 billion deficit forecast this year "a legitimate subject of concern," but asserts that it has the problem well in hand: The deficit, it assures the country, will be cut in half by 2009. This isn't credible -- and even if it were, it wouldn't be an adequate answer to a problem far more serious than this administration acknowledges.
Having presided over record deficits, the administration now wants to claim credit if it manages to cut the bloated number in half. Imagine someone who's been piling on extra pounds at an alarming rate. Trimming his annual weight gain from 30 pounds this year to 15 pounds five years from now still leaves him fat -- and getting fatter. The goal shouldn't be to cut the deficit in half; it should be to remedy the gap between what the government is spending and what it is taking in. To keep running up these deficits is to stick future generations with a tab they won't be able to afford.
The administration presents itself as blameless victim. "Today's budget deficits are the unavoidable product of the revenue erosion from the stock market collapse that began in early 2000, an economy recovering from recession, and a nation confronting serious national security threats," its budget states. "Had there not been one dime of tax relief under President Bush, we would have still run substantial budget deficits."
Yes, but what this omits is the degree to which the administration's tax cuts -- many dimes' worth, as it happens -- contributed to the problem. Of this year's $521 billion deficit, the tax cuts account for $272 billion. In 2009, when the administration projects that it will have cut the deficit to $239 billion, the tax cuts (assuming the administration wins the extension it demanded again yesterday) will cost $183 billion -- in other words, the lion's share of the projected shortfall.
But this low-ball estimate is a mirage. Like the 2005 budget, it doesn't take into account continuing costs in Iraq and Afghanistan. It fails to address the acknowledged problem of the alternative minimum tax, which was aimed at the wealthy but is sweeping in growing numbers of ordinary taxpayers. It doesn't fully fund the administration's long-term defense spending plans. A more accurate picture of the likely deficit in 2009 -- even assuming the administration manages to keep to its stated spending limits -- would put it more than $150 billion higher. And, of course, the surplus in government retirement accounts masks the true size of the shortfall: $501 billion in 2009, even under the administration's fuzzy math.
As to the spending cuts, Mr. Bush proposes to squeeze significant savings out of a small slice of the budget -- the less than one-fifth that goes to discretionary spending not related to defense or homeland security. Is this credible? Consider this statement yesterday from House Appropriations Committee Chairman C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla.): "No one should expect significant deficit reduction as a result of austere non-defense discretionary spending limits. The numbers simply do not add up." One illustration of the gulf between the administration and Congress comes in the amount set aside for highway funding. The administration's budget contemplates $256 billion over six years -- nearly $120 billion less than the measure now before the House.
The biggest distortion is to present a snapshot of 2009 and stop there. Making the tax cuts permanent would cost $132 billion in the coming five years, but $936 billion through 2014. How Mr. Bush can adhere to this reckless course is the true "subject of concern."
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