WP: Budget Plan Assumes Too Much, Demands Too Little

[kskiska]

Tuesday, February 7, 2006; A10

President Bush's budget blueprint would bring the federal government's budget deficit under control by decade's end. But to do that without raising taxes, the White House would need a sweeping tax reform that it has avoided proposing and a swift end to the war in Iraq.

The budget plan for fiscal 2007 underscores what budget analysts of all political stripes have been saying for years: The goals of balancing the budget, waging a global fight against terrorism and making Bush's first-term tax cuts permanent may be fundamentally at odds.

Under the budget plan, the deficit would jump from $318 billion last year to $423 billion in 2006, then slide back down to $183 billion in 2010. In 2011, the last year of the White House's projection, the deficit would again begin to rise, to $205 billion, reflecting the cost of extending Bush's tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date and enacting a proposed Social Security restructuring that would cost $57 billion in that year alone.

But even getting there requires some heroic assumptions.

The president's budget acknowledges the cost of Bush's call to make his tax cuts permanent -- $1.35 trillion over the next decade and nearly $120 billion in 2011 alone. But beyond 2007, the budget assumes no military expenditures in Iraq or Afghanistan and no effort to address the unintended effects of the alternative minimum tax, a parallel income tax system that was designed to hit the rich but has instead increasingly pinched the middle class. It also assumes Congress will cut domestic spending every year after 2007.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020601424.html?sub=AR

[truthisfreedom]

1. "and for my next trick, watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat!"

"whoops, musta been the wrong hat!"

[rodeodance]

2. Bush Spending Plan Sparks Protest--another new article

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060207/ap_on_go_pr_wh/budget&printer=1;_ylt=AgluzJ7NmPul.L82xCOCOnIGw_IE;_ylu=X3oDMTA3MXN1bHE0BHNlYwN0bWE-
Bush Spending Plan Sparks Protest

By MARTIN CRUTSINGER, AP Economics Writer1 hour, 31 minutes ago
.......

Democrats, as expected, pronounced the Republican president's budget plan dead on arrival. But many Republicans were equally sharp in their reservations about the $2.77 trillion spending blueprint the administration unveiled on Monday.

Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), R-Pa., called Bush's proposed cuts in education and health "scandalous" while Sen. Olympia Snowe (news, bio, voting record), R-Maine, said she was "disappointed and even surprised" at the extent of the administration's proposed cuts in Medicaid and Medicare.
.........

And in mandatory programs — so-called because the government must provide benefits to all who qualify — the president is seeking over the next five years savings of $36 billion in Medicare, $5 billion in farm subsidy programs, $4.9 billion in Medicaid support for poor children's health care and $16.7 billion in additional payments from companies to shore up the government's besieged pension benefit agency.

.......

Bush's budget would meet his twin goals of making permanent his first-term tax cuts, which are set to expire by 2010, and cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the year he leaves office.
...........

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., said Bush's budget was sending a clear message "that the most important thing to this administration are tax cuts being made permanent for the wealthiest of Americans."

[tecelote]

3. When we are done rebuilding Iraq, Can we begin rebuilding America?

[kstewart33]

4. "may be fundamentally at odds"

It is amazing how the media tap dances around the truth when it comes to Bush. May be??? The budget is a fantasyland.