Monday, February 07, 2005
Setting Priorities
Budget Nightmare. Georgie's budget includes a "11.5 percent [cut] at Housing and Urban Development." The Education Department bears the brunt of about a third of Georgie's proposed cuts. Even the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention are facing cuts. Bush defended his cuts by saying: "'It's budget that sets priorities, [. . .] "It's a budget that reduces and eliminates redundancy. It's a budget that's a lean budget.'" I guess housing people isn't a priority. Funding literacy programs or vocational education aren't priorities for the Radical Republicans.
In another sign of the hubris of the Radical Republicans, Joshua Bolten the budget director for the White Hose "said the administration would soon be coming forward with a supplemental request for an additional $81 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan." Bolten noted that to provide such figures now "wouldn't be responsible" because doing so would be just guessing. Never mind that the whole concept of budgeting is nothing more than a bunch of educated guesses. Ohhhh...and guessing about how much we need to support the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be admitting that we're stuck in Iraq with no exit strategy. And including the amounts for Iraq would give truth the lies Georgie is spreading about cutting the exploding deficit.
The good news is that by 2010, according to Georgie's budget we'll only have a deficit of some 207 billion dollars. Makes you wonder what ever happened to that surplus we had a few years ago. Just for comparison's sake that's only 39.1% of GDP, as compared to 37.2% of GDP.
For the hard numbers GPO's site.
Budget Nightmare. Georgie's budget includes a "11.5 percent [cut] at Housing and Urban Development." The Education Department bears the brunt of about a third of Georgie's proposed cuts. Even the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention are facing cuts. Bush defended his cuts by saying: "'It's budget that sets priorities, [. . .] "It's a budget that reduces and eliminates redundancy. It's a budget that's a lean budget.'" I guess housing people isn't a priority. Funding literacy programs or vocational education aren't priorities for the Radical Republicans.
In another sign of the hubris of the Radical Republicans, Joshua Bolten the budget director for the White Hose "said the administration would soon be coming forward with a supplemental request for an additional $81 billion for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan." Bolten noted that to provide such figures now "wouldn't be responsible" because doing so would be just guessing. Never mind that the whole concept of budgeting is nothing more than a bunch of educated guesses. Ohhhh...and guessing about how much we need to support the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be admitting that we're stuck in Iraq with no exit strategy. And including the amounts for Iraq would give truth the lies Georgie is spreading about cutting the exploding deficit.
The good news is that by 2010, according to Georgie's budget we'll only have a deficit of some 207 billion dollars. Makes you wonder what ever happened to that surplus we had a few years ago. Just for comparison's sake that's only 39.1% of GDP, as compared to 37.2% of GDP.
For the hard numbers GPO's site.