Martin Weiss on the Bush bidget:
Brace yourself for the budget battle of the century.
Just a few hours ago, the White House delivered its
$2.5 trillion budget to Capitol Hill. And already, it
seems to be mired in intense controversy.
The president's Republican base is rebelling.
The Democratic opposition is poised to launch a full-
scale attack.
And today's press reports are slamming the budget with
arguments eclectically drawn from both Republicans and
Democrats.
Here's just a sampling of the lines of attack now in
the works, all of which are validated by solid non-
partisan research and data ...
Attack #1. The president proposes to cut or eliminate
150 government programs. On the surface, this sounds
like a refreshing new wave of fiscal prudence. But not
according to analysts on the Republican side of the
aisle in Congress!
They say that, even if the Democrats allow every single
penny of their favorite programs to be cut precisely as
the president recommends, the most that will be saved
from the sum total of all 150 measures will be a meager
$15 billion.
With the government spending close to $7 billion a day,
that savings will be nearly all gone in just two days
during fiscal 2006.
Attack #2. In last year's proposed budget, the White
House recommended cutting or eliminating 65 programs,
for a total projected savings of $4.8 billion.
What actually happened? Hah! Congress wound up
approving the elimination of only four of the 65
programs, while cutting spending on only 20. How much
did they save? A meager $200 million, or a piddly 4
cents in actual savings for every dollar of proposed
savings.
If this pattern repeats itself for the fiscal 2006
budget, the total savings from the president's proposed
cutbacks will be watered down to a meager $615 million
-- a savings that would be gone after just two hours of
normal government operations!
Attack #3. Whether they're for or against the wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly all Democrats and
Republicans agree that you've got to account for the
$80 billion or so the administration figures the wars
will cost. Yet, due to the uncertainty, the cost is not
included in the official estimates of the deficit.
Where is that money going to come from? And what
happens if the cost turns out to be more than $80
billion?
Attack #4. The president's budget projects declining
deficits until the end of the decade. But so did nearly
all previous budgets proposals!
What's the actual recent track record? Record-smashing
red ink for the last three years in a row, culminating
in $427 billion in red ink for fiscal 2005.
What sweeping fundamental changes do we see in the U.S.
economy, world politics, or the budget process that
truly reduce the deficits? None.
Attack #5. Despite a State of the Union address last
week that was loud and clear regarding the president's
commitment to overhaul Social Security, the budget
delivered today is silent on its expected costs,
estimated at $1 trillion and $2 trillion over decades.
Where is all that money going to come from?
Attack #6. The budget is equally silent regarding the
cost of making last term's tax cuts permanent.
Attack #7. It's also mute when it comes to the expected
cost of fixing the alternative minimum tax (AMT). The
choices:
A. If the AMT is allowed to continue on its current
track, millions of middle-class tax payers will
have to pay more than their fair share.
B. If the AMT is fixed, as nearly everyone in
Washington agrees it ought to be, the fix is
going to reduce government revenues and make the
deficit even larger. By how much? Probably close
to a half trillion dollars over ten years!
Attack #8. Our nation's biggest budget busters --
Medicare, Social Security and military spending -- are
largely immune from cuts. And they're expected to grow
for years to come.
Attack #9. The largely untouchable, non-discretionary
spending -- especially for Medicare -- is expected to
really take off like a rocket in the years for which
today's budget provides no estimates, starting around
the time the next U.S. president takes office.
Wouldn't it be more prudent to start addressing that
problem now rather than wait until it's way too late?
Indeed, the only excuse I've heard so far for not doing
so goes something like this:
"It's already too late -- so why bother?"
Attack #10. With virtually no other politically
acceptable way to slash the deficit, the president is
counting on solid economic growth to do the job,
bringing in more government revenues and helping to
reduce the government's social costs.
This is not an irrational hope -- economic growth DID
make a huge difference in previous decades. But can we
repeat that feat?
The answer:
Only if most baby-boomers stop getting older, never
claim their Social Security benefits, and never get
sick ...
Only if the Fed stops raising interest rates, or its
interest-rate hikes have virtually no impact on GDP,
job growth, the bond market, and the stock market,
and ...
Only if the next 10 years bring something akin to the
prosperity we experienced during the booming `90s!
Bottom line:
You may choose to disagree with the budget's
priorities. But that can be handled through the normal
political process.
Or you may disagree with the budget's projections,
issues that are also subject to normal debate.
But what do you do when the budget has major --
sometimes massive -- omissions? How do you deal with
issues that many of the critical players refuse to
quantify or even talk about?
No answers are forthcoming from Washington ... and the
silence is deafening. |
