Abstract

Bush's Budget Lies

The author claims that the proposed budget of U.S. president George W. Bush, framed for the election campaign, lies about the causes and the depths of America's staggering fiscal decline, masks the costs of Bush's tax cuts and his wars, hides the hit the poor will take and the lucre the rich will get. Yet this election-year budget also tells the truth about Bush's priorities. Tax cuts come first. Despite the fiscal hole that has been dug on his watch (from a projected $5.6 trillion surplus over ten years to a $2.9 trillion deficit over the same period), Bush wants to keep digging, calling on Congress for another$ 1.2 trillion in tax cuts by making the cuts permanent and adding more ways for the wealthy to sock money away tax free. War and the preparation for war come next. Our military budget, already greater than 40 percent of the world's total military spending, is up 35 percent since Bush took office. The President rails against wasteful spending but throws billions more at a Pentagon that cannot account for what it has spent or what it has bought and is the largest source of waste, fraud and abuse in the government. Other initiatives are largely for show, given token funds to enable the President to talk about them. He will campaign as the education President, but he'll be nowhere to be found when it comes to meeting the challenge of educating the next generation. The President packages his cuts--in environmental protection, housing, childcare, education and training--as good government reforms, but he's essentially sending the poorest Americans much of the tab for his top-end tax cuts.