Bush's Last Budget May Be the
Next Administration's Agenda


Bush's Last Budget May Be the Next
Administration's Agenda

By Robert L. Borosage, Huffington Post
Posted on February 6, 2008, Printed on
February 6, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/76097/

Tossed out between the Superbowl and
Super Tuesday, dead on arrival in a
Democratic Congress, President Bush's
last budget will sink without a ripple. But
since John McCain and his rivals for the
Republican nomination all pledge
allegiance to Bush's policies, it is worth
taking a short look at the implications.

A budget, after all, is a statement of
values. Where your purse is so there is
your heart, we are taught. The budget
provides a snapshot of what the
president considers to be national
priorities. In his $3.1 trillion annual
budget for FY 2009, with a deficit of $400
billion borrowed from the future, Bush
tells us what is important.

This nation now spends more on its
military than the rest of the world
combined. It is, the president tells us,
not enough. This budget expands the
Pentagon's budget to levels, in inflation
adjusted dollars, not seen since World
War II. And that's not counting the cost --
now nearing a trillion and counting -- of
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

This nation now suffers Gilded Age
inequality. It is, the president tells us, not
unequal enough. His budget would make
his tax cuts permanent -- at the cost of
$2.4 trillion over the next 10 years, with
millionaires pocketing tax breaks of
about $150,000 a year. As the Center for
Policy and Budget Priorities reports, the
combined annual total of the tax cuts
enjoyed by this top 0.3 percent of
American households (three-one
thousandths) would exceed the entire
amount the federal government invests
in elementary and secondary education.
And by eliminating any tax on the
estates they leave to their heirs, the
president would entrench the extremes
of wealth in the next generation as well.

This nation's education system suffers a
savage inequality. For much of America,
we're failing to provide even the basics
of a world-class education -- preschool,
modern school facilities, small classes in
early grades, afterschool programs,
affordable college. This inequality, the
president tells us, is not savage enough,
so this budget cuts spending on
education, removes 200,000 low income
children from child care support, and
does nothing to bring college within
reach of working families.

This nation's health care system is
broken. But it is, the president tells us,
not broken enough. This budget would
cut Medicaid, at the very time states are
facing stark cutbacks to balance their
budgets in a recession. It would reduce
the number of children covered under
the Children's Health program. It would
freeze payments to doctors and
hospitals under Medicare, and
stunningly, cut support for the Centers of
Disease Control and Prevention, even as
a global economy puts us at greater risk
of importing global pandemics.

This nation's basic infrastructure -- from
bridges in Minneapolis to levees in New
Orleans, from sewage and clean water
treatments, to mass transit and fast
broadband -- is decrepit and collapsing.
But not, the president tells us, fast
enough. This budget continues to cut
domestic investment across the board,
even reducing federal support for "first
responders" -- police, fire and public
health officials by 45 percent percent.

With the housing bust, over a million
families are slated to lose their homes
this year. Not, the president tells us,
enough, so his budget slashes housing
vouchers, eliminating rental support for
an estimated 100,000 low income
families.

Families across America are struggling
with the soaring cost of gas and home
heating. Not, the president tells us,
enough, so his budget, in an act of
seeming perverse cruelty, calls for
cutting home heating support for
low-income families by 22 percent, even
without adjusting to the increase in gas
prices.

At the same time these cuts are being
made, the president projects deficits of
over $400 billion a year for two years.
But the problem isn't what he borrowed
but what he spent it on. He will rack up
some $4 trillion in debt by the time he
leaves office, squandering it largely on
tax cuts for the wealthy, and a disastrous
war of choice in Iraq. He mortgaged the
house, and wasted the dough on
misbegotten adventure and conspicuous
consumption.

None of this would matter, except that
those vying to succeed him promise
more of the same, only worse. Like Mr.
Bush, John "I'm the Sherriff" McCain
pledges to sustain the war, spend more
on the military and make the tax cuts
permanent. But he also vows to cut
domestic spending more deeply to bring
the budget into balance. That won't
happen: it would require eliminating
virtually everything the government
does at home other than entitlements
like Social Security and Medicare to
cover the true level of Mr. Bush's annual
deficits.

But his pledge shows where his heart is.
He'll continue to police the world and
pamper the privileged while starving
investments vital to our future. McCain
and Romney and Huckabee provide the
rhetoric. Mr. Bush's budget provides the
numbers. Ever wonder how great
powers decline, how empires collapse,
how advanced countries fall behind?
Read the numbers and weep.

Robert Borosage is co-director of the
Campaign For America's Future, and he
has written on political, economic, and
national security issues for publications
including The New York Times and The
Nation.