Bortaz
Banned
Bush Seeks Budget of $3.1 Trillion
This kills my conservative soul. If I thought a Democrat wouldn't do significantly worse, I'd be tempted to change my voting habits.
This kills my conservative soul. If I thought a Democrat wouldn't do significantly worse, I'd be tempted to change my voting habits.
WASHINGTON — President Bush submitted a federal budget of $3.1 trillion on Monday, declaring that the spending plan would keep the United States safe and prosperous and, despite its record size, would adhere to his principle of letting Americans keep as much of their own money as possible.
“Thanks to the hard work of the American people and spending discipline in Washington, we are now on a path to balance the budget by 2012,” the president said in an introductory message. “Our formula for achieving a balanced budget is simple: Create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all.”
The spending package for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 included no big surprises, especially since its key elements had already been reported in detail in recent days. The Pentagon’s proposed budget, for instance, is $515.4 billion, an increase of 7.5 percent over this year, meaning that military spending would be the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. And the White House’s plans for trimming Medicare and Medicaid have also been previewed.
Whether the president’s vision will become reality is by no means clear, given the Democratic majorities in both Houses of Congress and Mr. Bush’s lame-duck status as the country looks toward the election of the next president in November. Democrats are likely to push for increased spending on social programs, and fewer tax breaks for corporations and wealthy individuals.
Mr. Bush said he would cut or terminate 151 programs, saving $18 billion in 2009. One agency, the Education Department, accounts for 47 of the terminated programs and three of the programs to be cut. But he would increase spending in areas that fall under the umbrella of “national security.”
Mr. Bush’s proposed budget, the first in the nation’s history to exceed $3 trillion, foresees near-record deficits just ahead — $410 billion in the current fiscal year, on spending of $2.9 trillion, and $407 billion for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 — before the budget would come into balance in 2012.
But the total federal debt held by the public — that is, the accumulated total of all federal borrowing — has grown substantially in recent years. It was $3.3 trillion in 2001, when President Bush took office, and is expected to climb to $5.4 trillion this year and $5.9 trillion in 2009, according to budget documents issued by the White House on Monday. As a share of the economy, federal debt held by the public is expected to reach 39 percent of the gross domestic product in 2009, up from 33 percent in 2001.
Democrats reacted so vehemently to the president’s proposals and predictions that it seemed as if they and the president were talking about two different documents. Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, issued a statement saying that the budget was “fiscally irresponsible and highly deceptive, hiding the costs of the war in Iraq while increasing our skyrocketing debt.”
“President Bush’s fiscal policies are the worst in our nation’s history — he has turned record surpluses into record deficits — and this budget is more of the same,” Mr. Reid said.
And Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the budget calls for “more deficit-financed war spending, more deficit-financed tax cuts tilted to the benefit the wealthiest,” The Associated Press reported.
“Today’s budget bears all the hallmarks of the Bush legacy,” Representative John Spratt, the South Carolina Democrat who heads the House Budget Committee, told The A.P.
Some Republicans were also critical. “They’ve obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better,” Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in an interview with The A.P.
And Senator Olympia J. Snowe of Maine said the president wants to place the burden of balancing the budget “too greatly on the backs of the least fortunate among us.”
The proposed budget assumes that the “temporary” tax cuts that Mr. Bush pushed through Congress earlier in the decade, when Republicans were in control, will not be allowed to expire in the next few years, as they are supposed to on paper. In fact, people of both parties have acknowledged that it would be difficult politically to call for ending the tax cuts.
But Ms. Snowe, who criticized several aspects of the proposed budget, said making tax cuts for the “wealthiest Americans” is not the appropriate way to put the country’s finances in order, “a goal that is not mutually exclusive with an obligation to the most vulnerable among us.”
At first glance, the outlines of the budget debate appeared to mirror the situation in 2000, when President Clinton was a lame duck, the country was focused on the presidential election and the proposed budget for the next fiscal year was labeled a non-starter before the telephone book-sized budget documents even arrived at the Capitol.
But things were really much different in 2000. There was talk then about what the country would do with all its surplus money, given the booming economy and the demise of the Soviet Union, which was supposed to reduce military spending in the long run.
Then the dot-com bubble burst, heralding a recession. The Sept. 11 attacks touched off new spending for a new kind of war, and the campaigns in Afghanistan and especially Iraq began consuming enormous amounts of money.
The recession that began in 2001 was relatively short-lived. The current economic slowdown is linked in large part to the housing slump, which many analysts say could have deeper and longer-lasting effects than the dot-com collapse, and could leave the government short of money for a longer time.
Mr. Bush’s 2009 budget estimates that federal receipts will decline this year by $47 billion, to $2.5 trillion, mainly because of the soft economy and a decline in corporate income tax receipts. At the same time, federal spending is expected to rise this year by $201 billion, to a total of $2.9 trillion. (By contrast, receipts grew at a brisk pace averaging 11 percent a year from 2004 to 2007.)
Mr. Bush said his budget would slow “the unsustainable growth of entitlement spending” with proposed savings of $208 billion over five years. This includes savings of $178 billion in Medicare, $17 billion in Medicaid and $6 billion in student aid programs. The president proposes to raise $2 billion from new enrollment fees and higher pharmacy co-payments for certain veterans receiving health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Mr. Bush also assumes that the government will collect $9 billion over the next five years in higher premiums for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation. He would give the agency’s board authority to raise premiums to produce “the revenue necessary to meet expected future claims” and to retire its deficit. These changes would improve the agency’s financial condition and “safeguard the future benefits of American workers,” the White House said.
Another big difference between 2000 and 2008 is that the legions of “baby boomers” are starting to march into retirement. As a group, they can be expected to live longer than their parents, and collect more Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Upstanding citizen Bortaz Smith, of Edinburg, Texas, was overheard cussing and vowing revenge.
Robert Pear contributed reporting.
