Text 17779, 60 rader
Skriven 2006-02-08 18:37:32 av BOB SAKOWSKI (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av THE REJECT
Ärende: popular preznit
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http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?articleID=f19792bc-79e6-46f5-97bf-23abc12b431a


PRESIDENT BUSH is talking as if he finally got the message on spending, and
he is in New Hampshire today to make that point. The White House already
has boasted a great deal about the President’s 2007 budget, which would
trim or eliminate 141 domestic wasteful or unnecessary programs and reduce
Medicare’s rate of growth. But the budget is not as bold as the White House
claims it is.

In 1994 Republicans proposed cutting or eliminating 300 federal programs.
Bush himself put 154 programs on the chopping block last year. This year
it’s just 141. And that Medicare “cut,ö which Democrats are calling cruel
and irresponsible? It would trim Medicare’s annual growth rate by a
fraction of a percent. Medicare still would grow by 66 percent over the
next five years, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Focusing on the 141 programs and the slight nick to Medicare can make one
miss the big picture. Erasing needless spending from the budget is welcome
and must be done. More important, however, is entitlement reform, and Bush
has squandered the opportunity to do that.

Back when the President had mountains of political capital and sky-high
approval ratings, he could have pushed Congress to begin controlling the
unsustainable growth in federal entitlement spending. Instead, he created a
wholly new and recklessly large prescription drug entitlement, dramatically
increased federal spending on education, and signed pork-laden farm and
transportation bills that any financially responsible executive would have
vetoed.

The President has yet to push serious structural reforms of Medicaid and
Medicare. (To his credit, he advocated serious reform of Social Security,
but he couldn’t get the votes in Congress.)

The President frames his 2007 budget as one that starts the process of
serious deficit reduction. (That would be the deficit made ridiculously
large by Republican profligacy.) Unfortunately, the deficit reduction Bush
touts is largely a fiction. His budget does not include spending on Iraq
and Afghanistan, and it absurdly assumes that Congress will restrain
spending in the next few years.

Even if a miracle occurs and Bush magically meets his deficit reduction
projections by the end of the decade, the deficit will spiral out of
control almost immediately after that, as soon as the Baby Boomers start to
retire and collect Social Security and Medicaid.

It is bad enough that Americans had to wait five years before Republicans
in Washington began thinking about presenting budgets that looked as if
parts of them might have been written by Republicans. Then we finally get
one and it takes no real stab at controlling entitlement spending.

Mr. President, you are not fooling anyone. Stop these short-term political
games and give us a budget that brings federal spending down to a
sustainable level. Don’t let the American people down by passing this
problem on to our children. 
[end]

Corruption Central, aka the Bush White House
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