The Budget

Getcher Red Hot $2.9 Trillion Budget Here

The Budget

President Bush sent Congress a $2.9 trillion budget plan yesterday. Here are the facts and figures we thought were interesting. Because you deserve a Budget Breakdown today!

Facts For The Good Fight

President Bush sent Congress a $2.9 trillion budget plan yesterday. Here are some of the facts and figures we thought were interesting.

ONE — THE SIZE OF THE PENTAGON BUDGET

President Bush’s budget for the Pentagon would be $481.1 billion (which is 62% higher than it was in 2001).

TWO — TRICKY MATH

Math Trick #1: This leaves out two major spending bills for the war in Iraq. Not included: the $93 billion emergency supplemental for this year. Not included: the $145 billion in the next fiscal year for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Math Trick #2: The president’s budget also assumes that after 2009, the cost of the war on terror and the cost of the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, or elsewhere will be…zero. Nothin’. Nada. Zip.

THREE — MAKING THE TAX CUTS PERMANENT

President Bush wants to make the “temporary” tax cuts enacted by the GOP Congress in 2001 and 2003 permanent. That costs the government $374 billion over the next five years.

FOUR — TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY

Good for the rich, not so much for the rest of us: a studier earlier this month by the Congressional Budget Office showed these tax cuts were very, very helpful to the ultra-rich who earn over a million dollars a year, but those of us swimming in the middle class actually saw our tax rates go up. [NY Times]

FIVE — TAX CUTS AND THE SURPLUS

Also, the CBO found in today’s economy, it could be possible to turn the $248 billion deficit into a $170 billion surplus by 2012…UNLESS President Bush makes his “temporary” tax cuts permanent. In that case, the deficit hits $146 billion in 2012 and gets worse from there. [Washington Post]

People Are Talking

President George Bush

“Today we submit a budget to the United States Congress that shows we can balance the budget in five years without raising taxes.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., CA)

“The day of the blank check for the president and the war is over!”

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., ND)

“The president’s budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction.”

Sen. Harry Reid (D., NV)

The budget “uses deception to hide a massive increase in debt, and it’s priorities are disconnected from the needs of middle-class Americans.”

Power Point

CUTS

• Bad news for the poor and elderly: The president’s budget will slash the budgets for Medicare and Medicade by $96 billion. [Washington Post]
• Bad news for the poor: The budget changes food stamp rules, effectively kicking 185,000 Americans out of the food stamp program. [WSJ]
• Bad news for the sick: The budget would cut funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by about $500 million. [WSJ]
• Bad news for the troubled: The budget would cut grants for programs that help troubled juveniles and abused women. [WSJ]
• Bad news for the disabled: The budget would slash funds for the Office of Disability Employment Policy by 32%, from $28 million down to $19 million. [WSJ]
• Bad news for veterans: The budget would institute higher enrollment fees for health care for vets, plus increase their copayments for medications. [WSJ]
• Bad news for safety: The budget cuts grants for state and local law enforcment by 70%, from $1.82 billion last year to $542 million this year. [WSJ]

COSTS

• The budget asks for $495 million for a nuclear waste dump at the YuccaMountain in Nevada.
• The budget asks for $4.6 billion to purchase 20 more F-22A Raptor fighters from Lockheed Martin. The Raptor is “arguably the most unnecessary weapon system currently built by the Pentagon,” insanely expensive and unnecessary. [Bloomberg] [Center for American Progress]
• The budget asks for $1 billion to build that fence along the southwest border. You know, the fence project the DHS Inspector General said faced “numerous financial and management risks similar to those that doomed past border security efforts.” [National Journal]
• The budget allocates $951 million for The Orion, a new space vehicle which could travel on Mars, plus a $1.2 billion for its own launching system. [WSJ]