New at Reason

February 12, 2007

Steve Slivinski explains how President Bush can grow the budget and still catch heat for "cutting" it.

Comments

|2.12.07 @ 8:19AM|#

So, what happened to the Rudy thread below?

Have the New York money people reached out their slimy tentacles to smite it?

|2.12.07 @ 9:16AM|#

Just imagine the outrage if there had been one percent or flat growth.

What hyperbole could you choose to up the ante on 'deep cuts' and 'slashes programs'?

|2.12.07 @ 9:30AM|#

The Boston Globe article opens up with the line "President Bush yesterday proposed deep cuts to federal healthcare, education, and transportation programs."

Maybe some discussion of whether or not this statement is objectively true would have shed some light on the issue, rather than just heat.

Guy Montag|2.12.07 @ 9:40AM|#

Have the New York money people reached out their slimy tentacles to smite it?

And you guys thought I was joking about time travel!

I am sure that General Clark will back me up on this, if he were allowed to speak freely.

Guy Montag|2.12.07 @ 9:48AM|#

Okay, joke thrower off, this is serious.

If you're George W. Bush, you start the spending bonanza all over again, with an opening bid of $2.9 trillion. You increase the Pentagon budget by 10 percent, and that's before you add the price of the troop surge for the increasingly unpopular war in Iraq. In short, you do what you've always been doing. You spend like hell and hope nobody-particularly fiscal conservatives-pays attention.

Yet another reporter who does not know the first thing about the budget process, the federal budget or fiscal law.

Between the Impoundment Control Act of 1974 and the Anti-defeciency act, the president can not do any of the things listed above and he can not refuse to spend the money appropriated by the Congress no matter how much he would like to save money (even if he wanted to save any at all).

The 'budget' that he submits to the Congress is nothing more than an information paper that the Congress can and usually ignores.