Budget Time

We probably focus more than makes sense on the size of domestic discretionary spending, given its relatively minor contribution to the country's long-term fiscal problems. Still, the announcement of a relatively tight new budget, with (as per the SOTU guarantee) spending growth below the rate of inflation, is a good sign. Of course, it remains to be seen whether it'll stay relatively tight…

Comments

[sage]

How about reducing spending at the rate of inflation? One would think that couldn't hurt too much. But hey, I'm not a beaurocrat.

[Morat]

Look, if he's not even bothering to estimate the costs for Iraq and Afghanistan, much less his Social Security plan, he's not actually serious about cutting the budget.

Why do you even bother pretending that Bush is going to be serious about this? He's been President for four years. It's time to actually judge him on what he does and not what he says.

So here's my prediction: If he cuts anything, it'll be things like food stamps, not things like farm subsidies. He'll probably increase spending their. In the end, this year's deficit will be just as bad -- probably worse -- and that's if he doesn't start mucking with Social Security.

Bush has no interest in cutting the deficit. You're a fool if you believe otherwise. About the only thing he does seem interested in is changing where all that borrowed money flows. It's a bad year to be poor or middle class.

[Jason Ligon]

No programs will be cut. Everyone will scream about their favorite program, and spending will go up. Democrats will say that the biggest handout is low taxes. Republicans will say we will grow out of the debt, and besides, they tried to cut spending and couldn't get it done.

You'd think I'd heard this before ...

[jake]

I like the "Veteran's Tax" Bush wants by doubling the co-pays on prescriptions and hitting them all for an extra $250/yr for the insurance.

But they support the troops!

Suckers...

[TJ]

Sanchez

It's manifestly obvious that you put too much emphasis on cutting discretionary spending, because you mention it all.

One imagines that the projection that the deficit next year will only be 3% instead of 3.5% of GDP has nothing to do with dollars spent, but assumes that the economy will grow enough to cause the relative change.

Because they are talking about non-military/non-Medicare spending?that is, because spending in dollar terms will change little?that almost has to be the case.

The only bright spot I've heard of is that the Bushies want to reduce farm subsidies fairly dramatically. Better late than never, no?

[Evan Williams]

This is all a farce. Bush increased spending more in his first 4 years than Clin-Ton did in his 8. He enacted protectionist trade barriers and increased subsidies. Yet, if one looks at the whitehouse.gov official administration policy platform, it reads like Bush is a bloody Hayekian free-marketeer.

As morat noted, it's time to finally judge him on his actions, not his words...because this has become the tactic of the GOP as of late: Speak like libertarians, govern like authoritarians. And the only reason they get away with it is because we let them. They say "free market" and we all jump---they usurp the LP's economic platform on paper, then do a 180 when it comes to acting on it.

Here, yet again, Bush has nothing to lose. He knows he'll never be allowed to cut farm subsidies---because the minute he tries, his pals from the plains states will, as Radley Balko notes, threaten to pull funding for his faith based initiatives or some other little pet crap. SO, he comes out in public and talks about eliminating the deficit---yet, as Morat also points out, this does not take into account the extra $80,000,000,000.00 that he plans to ask Congress to fork over for Afghanistan & Iraq. And the supposed promise to cut domestic spending, well, hey...when you cut domestic spending, but increase defense spending, then you can't really call it a "cut", now can you? More like a "reallocation of funding". Last I heard, the military budget would be increased by 5%. Good thing, too---from the looks of it, they're running on a shoestring budget as it is...

[thoreau]

Weren't farm subsidies "phased out" several years ago? I recall reading somewhere that a law was passed to reduce the subsidies over several years. But a couple years into the program the subsidies are restored.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if a bill is passed with much fanfare that gives larger subsidies this year to "help with the adjustment", and then steadily smaller subsidies in subsequent years.

And I'd be even less surprised if the following year, with very little fanfare, the subsidies are restored to their current levels.

[Brian]

thoreau - I think they were phased out as part of the Republican Revolution of the 90s, then brought back by Bush.

[Stephen VanDyke]

Any budget cuts are good cuts. But the truth here is that they've opted to cut the hard-to-reach fat near the center of the bone instead of the pork fat that envelopes the outside of the ham.

On the other hand, if the goal is simply to piss off entitlement-advocating Democrats, then they definitely succeeded.

[thoreau]

Do they count it as a "cut" if initially a $2 billion increase is requested for a program and later it's amended to "only" a $1 billion increase?

Cuz I can totally see Bush doing those sorts of cuts!

[SPD]

To all those war vets, Middle American farmers, NASCAR-lovin'/trailer-park dwellin' welfare cheats and out of work, blue-collar "morals and values" Republicans who voted for Bush: Congratulations! You will now reap what you've sown.

Enjoy the next four years trying to eke out an existence now, suckers.

But, hey, at least we'll continue to spend money on blowing them Middle East types reeeeeeeeal good. That should make y'all happy.

[joe]

Jason Ligon, there's a difference this time: the Republicans in Congress have neither a Democratic president, nor a Democratic leadership in either house, to blame for their inability to cut spending.

This time, the Republicans will own every cut they propose for every program, and they will own every dollar not cut from the budget. At some point, they're just going to tell Fox to run the graphic with the word "Iran" in front of a radioactive symbol, and slip the budget bill through when nobody's looking.

[Ken Shultz]

"This time, the Republicans will own every cut they propose for every program, and they will own every dollar not cut from the budget. At some point, they're just going to tell Fox to run the graphic with the word "Iran" in front of a radioactive symbol, and slip the budget bill through when nobody's looking."

I used to argue with statements like this, now all I can say is that it wasn't always this way.

...I can't even say that it would be worse if the Democrats were in control.

[thoreau]

...I can't even say that it would be worse if the Democrats were in control.

Ken, you're committing heresy! The Democrats are always worse! That comes straight from the Book of Libertarian Dogmas.

Somebody's going to lose his secret decoder ring!

[norbizness]

"It's clearly a proposed budget. It has a lot of made-up numbers, blatant omissions, and accounting tricks in it."

[Ken Shultz]

"Somebody's going to lose his secret decoder ring!"

...But I thought that was just Kerry!

If Kerry had been elected, it would be much worse--now--can I have my decoder ring back?

[b-psycho]

Ken, you're committing heresy! The Democrats are always worse! That comes straight from the Book of Libertarian Dogmas.

Oddly enough I've noticed in looking over my own reactions to the political tides that I'm starting to root for the Democrats to an extent. I think their ideas are dumb as well -- obviously since their ideology begins & ends with "blame everything on tax cuts" -- but dammit somebody has to block Bush. The GOP fervently supports Big Brother regardless of what they say, and they have carte blanche to do whatever at the moment. If the only way to slow the bleeding this time is to prop up the mainstream Left then so be it, desperate times call for desperate measures.

[TJIT]

b-psycho,

If I thought democrats would push big brother back I would vote for them, but they have never given anything but lip service to this issue. The democrats support big brother just as much as the republicans do, they just don't seem to get the blame as much as the Republicans do.

Tell me again how many anti big brother democrats voted against the patriot act? And I believe it was a republican (Sensennbrenner?) who pushed to have portions of the patriot act sunset.

Income tax and social security, two aspects of government the democrats love, have made possible more big brother activities then Ashcroft could have put together in his wildest dreams.

[b-psycho]

I'm talking gridlock, TJ. Of course they aren't going to actually roll back the State, they'd burst into flames if anyone tried to argue for it while calling themselves a Democrat.

Any hopes for right now are basically dead. All I'm hoping for is that since the option of the system working properly and leading to substantial reduction of government is unavailable, we can get a wrench thrown in the gears and slow it down.

In the long run, the entire mess really needs to be gutted, top to bottom, by any means possible. Who knows, maybe if the endless cycle goes on long enough they'll finally lose any claim to legitimacy, stirring people to get off their asses for once & realize they're being screwed over. All I know is there ain't an opening for much now.

As for the income tax & SS: you're completely correct that those are atrocious and need to be deaded. I fail to see how the GOP has any interest in doing so though, Bush seems to have backed away from serious tax reform & so far the private accounts plan sounds like it leaves in place the exact problem with Social Security itself -- government "management" of our money. If the accounts are private, then how come they can tell us what we can and cannot do with them? No, if it's my money as the president says, then his opinion should have no bearing whatsoever on where that money goes. Leftys are complaining about the "privatization" plan because they think "the market is a shell game" (I've actually read that sentiment on many lefty blogs, even on the more moderate ones), while the real problem with it is that it's still too statist. I'd like to see better, and hear some more serious talk about dealing with the defecit: how is a $2.5 trillion budget "tight"?

[pragmatist]

b-psycho, I wish I believed grid lock was still possible. But think about it -- you got Big Brother Dems and big BROTHER Reps.

It used to seem like fiscally there was, actually, some sort of idealogical difference between the two. But today Reps grow big brother's right brain, while the Dems grow the left brain. Or did I get that backwards? I give up, you tell me.

You're right, though. Occassionally, like a windows OS, civilizations need to be rebooted. You just have to hope it can be done successfully without guns and bullets, and that the machine doesn't crash while restarting

Hit space bar now to use last known good hardware configuration.

[pragmatist]

I also wish I could believe that the whole problem here is "just because we let them". But I don't believe that's true anymore. No one in gov't today has any interest in pushing back the size and scope of gov't. Your prospects for career advancement are not helped by rolling back revenues.

I seem to remember democrats screaming the "it's just because we let them get away with it!" thing not so long ago. I believe their solution was to move to Canada. Or maybe Europe.

So what does that leave us with? A libertarian invasion of Mexico? A place where the last known good hardware configuration is around 200 years old.

[Rick Barton]

Real fiscal conservatives need to take control of the GOP away from Bush before he leads the country to financial ruin and a deprivation of liberty with all of this government spending!

"Even as President Bush proposes deep cuts in healthcare, farm subsidies and other domestic programs, his new budget makes one thing clear about the legacy of his first term in the White House: The era of big government is back. Bush's $2.6-trillion budget for 2006, if approved by Congress, would be more than one-third bigger than the budget he inherited four years ago."

From: "Despite Proposed Cuts, Bush Budget Is Bigger" Read the whole thing here:

http://tinyurl.com/53mey

Contact your rep. and senators. Tell them that you demand real cuts in the budget. Each of us can make a difference, but we must take action.

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/

[thoreau]

The democrats support big brother just as much as the republicans do, they just don't seem to get the blame as much as the Republicans do.

A similar thing could be said about Republicans (or at least the Republican leadership under Bush) with regard to spending. They like it as much as Democrats do, but they don't get much blame for it.

And yes, I know, there are some courageous fiscal conservatives among the Congressional Republicans. Just as there are some truly principled ACLU types among the Congressional Democrats. Well, Clinton didn't see fit to appoint any of those ACLU types as Attorney General and Bush hasn't seen fit to take budgetary advice from any of the thrifty Congressional Republicans.

Both parties have some members who take admirable stances and give their parties a good reputation on certain issues. But the good guys only write the speeches and pamphlets. The bad guys write the legislation and regulations.