Wasn't This Cat an MBA?

[Darryl G. Thomas]

If you look up the definition of tax and spend liberal you'd see my picture, but this shit is whack:

Bush's $2.8T Budget Proposal Cuts Domestic Programs

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 6, 2006; 1:51 PM

President Bush today proposed a $2.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2007 that would cut billions of dollars from domestic programs ranging from Medicare and food stamps to local law enforcement and disease control, while extending most of his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date.

Under the plan, a budget deficit -- expected to reach $423 billion this year -- would fall to $183 billion by 2010, more than meeting his goal to cut the deficit in half by 2009. But it would rise again to $205 billion in 2011, reflecting the cost of the extensions in the president's tax cuts.

"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 said in his budget message. "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."

The budget, for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, is a tall order for a Congress facing a difficult election year. Defense spending would rise 6.9 percent, from $411 billion to $439 billion. Homeland security spending would rise by 3.3 percent.

But all other operations of government would fall by $2.2 billion, or 0.5 percent.

To accommodate increased spending in the president's favored non-security programs such as diplomacy and foreign aid, veterans health care and energy, other programs would face significant cuts. Agriculture spending would fall 6.5 percent and education spending would drop 3.8 percent. The Department of Transportation would lose 9.4 percent of its discretionary budget. The Army Corps of Engineers -- a congressional favorite that was highly criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- would be cut 11.2 percent.

But the biggest savings would come from entitlement programs, in which spending rises and falls according to complex formulas that Congress would have to change to meet Bush's demands. The president proposed cutting Medicare by $36 billion over five years, and $105 billion over a decade -- mainly by reducing payments to hospitals and other providers. Federal child-support enforcement payments would fall slightly, while Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program would lose $5 billion over five years and $12 billion over 10 years.

Some of the savings that Bush seeks were specifically rejected by Congress last year, such as tightening eligibility for food stamps and opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

And a slew of tax cuts, tax incentives and tax-cut extensions would cost the Treasury $1.7 trillion over the next decade, dwarfing the $172 billion in entitlement savings and proposed user fees in the budget. Bush also included the cost of his embattled plan to add private investment accounts to Social Security, at a cost to the Treasury of $82 billion in the first two years of the program and $172 billion over the first seven years.

All totaled, his proposals for entitlement programs -- including cuts, tax hikes and Social Security partial privatization -- would actually increase spending by $551 billion. But those costs are not reflected in Bush's deficit projections, since the president did not deduct the Social Security costs from the bottom line.

The spending cuts, coupled with the policy changes and tax proposals, are a recipe for tough fights in Congress. Many House Republicans, having just elected a new majority leader on pledges of fiscal austerity, will be ready to embrace many of the president's proposals.

"As we continue our efforts to control spending and reduce the deficit, the president's proposal provides a solid starting point for this year's budget by focusing on our most pressing needs: sustaining our strong economy and job creation, and ensuring the strength of our national defense and homeland security," said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa).

But Democrats are spoiling for a fight, especially in tough congressional districts where Republican moderates will be caught between the demands of their Washington leadership and the misgivings of many voters.

"When it comes to protecting those who need it most, America has always had a moral compass," said Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.). "For the past six years, President Bush has read it upside down. After driving the nation into a fiscal mess, the president is asking our seniors, our students and our families to clean it up while the wealthy special interests reap the rewards."

[Gary Sisco]

Anyone can buy an MBA, Darryl. Get with it, son.

[patricia]

All I could think of when I saw the proposed budget was that our former Prime Minister's government was voted out on a motion of non-confidence on the presenting of his last budget.
Bush must be relieved and quietly smirking at the thought that if that provision were provided, he might be facing a similar fate.
The budget will be debated, particularly the extending of the tax cuts, but ultimately it will be passed in some form.

[Gary Sisco]

He just hands one to Congress. Congress looks at it as a formality and then creates one of its own, since they are the only ones with power to raise "revenue."

Given the economic and fiscal frivolity of this Congress, I doubt very much that anything of that sort in a one-party-rule situation would lead to a vote of no confidence. The motion would likely find a hundred pork projects attached to it in any case.

This Congress has been the most irresponsible and pork-filled, ever. The quicker it's done, the better off we'll be. There's already a couple-three generations of debt plus interest that has to be paid, from their watch alone. Guess whose taxes will skyrocket in coming years?

Theirs?

Guess again.

[patricia]

Gary, some years ago I read a book titled "The Screwing Of The Middle Class" and it's message is as true today as it was in the sixties, when the book was written.
The rich, like Bush and Co. will always be rich and the middle class, if not totally eliminated over time, will carry the bulk of the tax burden. Thus it was, and thus it will remain. The danger is the systematic destruction of that same middle class. That has happened to other countries over the years, with disastrous results.

[Dr Dave]

...and not just any ol' MBA. His is from Harvard.

As Gary points out, Bush proposes, Congress disposes. And man, have they been disposing! We can honk all we want about balancing the budget on the backs of the poor, but the poor don't vote, and when they have the temerity to try, we find a way to prevent them (don't we, Brother Jeb?).

As long as we maintain the fiction of an equal-opportunity society, we'll always be able to blame the poor for their own condition. Those who put their shoulders to the wheel, their noses to the grindstone, etc., etc., will be able to enjoy the American privilege of going into hock to the eyeballs and beyond so that they may own their own ride and their own double-wide.

[tippy]

these are the family values people?

[Doc Martin]

The only thing missing from the 2007 budget is fiscal responsibility.

[patricia]

Originally Posted by Doc Martin

The only thing missing from the 2007 budget is fiscal responsibility.

I suspect that fiscal responsibilty is another quaint idea, like the definition of torture being only that which causes organ failure or death, or the Geneva Conventions.
Guidelines which apply to mere mortals don't apply to the Bush Administration.

[Dr Dave]

Originally Posted by tippy

these are the family values people?

Yeah! You create a family, you put them to work, they create value.

[tristano's ghost]

Gee, those tax cuts passed in 2001 were supposed to be temporary. That's how W. got Congress to pass them--wonder why he changed his mind? Gee willikers, huh? Stunning, when you look at how quickly we went from one of the most fiscally responsible Federal budgetary eras ever (second Clinton term) to deficits that are mortgaging our future to the hilt. And this budget isn't even close to being honest about the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It's the Norquist theorem at work again; they're going to continue running up pork and defense, try to retain or pass even more tax cuts for the rich, and then sing a sad song that the only thing left to do is gut social spending.

[tristano's ghost]

I think this budget is pretty much DOA anyway:

Election-Year Politics Imperil Bush Budget By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush's budget is barely a day old, but it already faces dire prospects in Congress. It's a blueprint better suited for an odd-numbered year.

Odd-numbered years are when Congress typically takes on difficult budget issues. During even-numbered years, when lawmakers have to face the voters, they don't like to vote for things like cuts to Medicare, food stamps, farm subsidies and education.

"I can't believe that there's a will to cut $36 billion out of Medicare," said Sen. Tom Harkin (news, bio, voting record), D-Iowa. "I can't imagine the Republican Party ... is going to allow this to come through this year in an election year."

"We all know who votes in election years," Harkin added, referring to the high voting rate for senior citizens who rely on the health care program for the aged.

Bush's budget is the most austere since the Reagan era as the president seeks to build upon his spending cut success of last year, when Congress advanced a budget bill squeezing $39 billion through the end of the decade from the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled, the Medicare and myriad other programs.

Even though Bush's five-year, $36 billion plan to reap Medicare savings has little impact on beneficiaries and instead comes mostly by shaving inflation increases in Medicare payments to health care providers like hospitals and nursing homes, it landed with a thud on Capitol Hill.

"It's going to be more difficult (to address Medicare) than last year because of the fact that it's an election year — and it was very difficult to do in a non-election year," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa. "The question is: Does it have to be 2006 or can it be 2007? And I haven't made up my mind."

The first step under Congress' arcane procedures for implementing the federal budget is to pass a budget resolution. That's a nonbinding blueprint that sets the limits of subsequent bills to implement the plan, including the appropriations bills that Congress passes each year.

Far less frequently, a budget resolution spins off a bill to cut benefit programs like Medicare. Last year's budget-cut bill — cleared by the House for Bush's desk a week ago — was the first in eight years and went through a legislative slog that showed rifts within the GOP and exposed many lawmakers to uncomfortable votes.

Most of the easier-to-pass budget cuts were claimed in last year's bill.

"All of the low-hanging fruit is taken," said Tom Kahn, Democratic staff director of the House Budget Committee. "And it wasn't hanging very low."

Now, there's little appetite, other than among a few true spending hawks such as Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, R-N.H., for an election-year round. Congress hasn't passed an election-year benefit cut bill since 1990. And that one only occurred because Congress had to act to avoid massive across-the-board spending cuts imposed under the old Gramm-Rudman budget law.

Even if GOP leaders did want to take on another round of budget cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and other entitlement programs whose budgets increase each year, Bush's budget is filled with proposals that didn't make the grade in last year's round. On example is the $16.7 billion in unspecified reforms to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. Congress managed just $3.6 billion in PBGC-related savings last year.

Other already-rejected proposals that returned on Monday include cuts to crop payments and restricting eligibility for about 300,000 food stamp recipients. One controversial new proposal would end the $255 Social Security death benefit paid to the surviving spouse or children of a beneficiary.

Meanwhile, Bush proposed reducing the operating budgets of nine of 15 Cabinet departments, including Agriculture, Education, Interior and Health and Human Services. Moderate Republicans such as Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Olympia Snowe of Maine, Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Mike DeWine of Ohio are chaffing at the cuts.

Specter, who has voted for every GOP congressional budget since Bush became president and reluctantly accepted a major squeeze to his cherished Labor, Health and Human Service bill last year, now vows to stand up to the White House.

"I will not support any budget resolution that does not provide adequate funding for domestic discretionary programs," said Specter, chairman of a subcommittee funding health and education programs. Factoring in inflation, programs under his jurisdiction face a $7 billion cut.

Congress hasn't wrapped up its appropriations work before Election Day in an even-numbered year since 1998, raising the likelihood of a postelection lame duck session to deal with the 11 appropriations bills.

"The odds are strong that whatever they do will be pushed until after the election," said Tom Mann, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

[Gary Sisco]

Actually, in their case, Doc, they put other people's families to work creating value -- for them.

That's the real way it works and the only way capital "grows."

The US is also one of the very few places, likely the only place, where only the ruling class is conscious of itself as a class, and *very* conscious of it, too. The rest have been trained to view the ruling class's "interests" as their own, like barking seals. Throw them a sardine, they'll bark for ya.