NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/21/opinion/21wed1.html?th&emc=thSleight of Budgeting
Published: September 21, 2005
The decision by Congressional leaders to delay action on their tax-and-spending bills was most welcome. The bills' broad outlines were drawn up pre-Katrina, and were objectionable even then: spending cuts totaling $35 billion over five years in programs for low- and moderate-income families, and $70 billion in new tax breaks, mostly for the most affluent families. Counting interest, the bills would increase the deficit by $40 billion over five years.
Post-Katrina, those plans would be scandalous, highlighting the skewed priorities that have put the country into a tight financial spot as it copes both with hurricane damage and with the social and economic rifts that Katrina has exposed.
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Now, however, it appears that postponement may be only a tactical move to recast Katrina as the event that requires Congress to hack away at existing programs to pre-empt unacceptably large deficits from reconstruction spending. That's false.
Katrina cannot and should not be paid for by cutting government programs, unless the goal is to end up with a government that's even less effective than it was before Katrina. True, there's fat that Congress should trim. But even if members of Congress were willing to rescind the porkiest of the pork spending they approved in the highway bill passed last summer, doing that would raise about $24 billion. What is needed most is more revenue, and that requires Congress to stop cutting taxes.
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