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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (1234)	2/9/2004 8:56:06 PM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 173976

It's like a man who earns $50,000 per year getting a mortgage for a $5 million house and bragging that he got a good interest rate. BUSH: We've got to deal with Social Security as well. As you know, I mean, these entitlement programs need to be dealt with. We are dealing with some entitlement programs right now in the Congress. The highway bill, it's going to be an interesting test of fiscal discipline on both sides of the aisle. The Senate's is about $370, as I understand, $370 billion; the House is at less than that, but over $300 billion. And, as you know, the budget I propose is about $256 billion. So... It would appear from this response that the president believes that highway construction is an entitlement program. Again: Does he have the faintest idea what he's talking about? RUSSERT: But your base conservatives--listen to Rush Limbaugh, the Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute--they're all saying you're the biggest spender in American history. BUSH: Well, they're wrong. Based on what? They have the numbers. All the president has is words. RUSSERT: Mr. President... BUSH: If you look at the appropriations bills that were passed under my watch, in the last year of President Clinton, discretionary spending was up 15 percent, and ours have steadily declined. OK, let me be candid here and say I don't know what he means. Does he believe that discretionary spending has declined each year under his watch? Surely not. It has exploded during his administration. Is he saying that the rate of increase has slowed? Again: surely not. As Joshua Claybourn has shown, Clinton's last budget increased domestic discretionary spending by 4.56 percent. Bush's first budget increased it by 7.06 percent. His second increased it by over 10 percent. We have a few options here: The president doesn't know what he's talking about, or he's lying, or he trusts people telling him lies. But it is undeniable that this president is not on top of the most damaging part of his legacy--the catastrophe he is inflicting on our future fiscal health. ...if this is the level of coherence, grasp of reality, and honesty that is really at work in his understanding of domestic fiscal policy, then we are in even worse trouble than we thought. We have a captain on the fiscal Titanic who thinks he's in the Caribbean. tnr.com