Let Them Eat Cake

Bush sends $2.9 trillion budget to Congress
Big increases for the military, cuts for domestic programs

WASHINGTON - President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress on Monday, proposing a big increase in military spending, including billions more to fight the war in Iraq, while squeezing the rest of government to meet his goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs - Medicare and Medicaid - over the next five years.

"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

The arrival of the massive four-volume set of green budget books, which will cover the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, will be followed by months of debate in Congress. Democrats charged that Bush wants to make painful cuts across a wide swath of government programs while protecting tax cuts that will make the deficit worse after 2012.

“In real terms, Bush’s plan is going to have very substantial cuts by the fifth year of this budget in all of the domestic priorities from education and health care to law enforcement and veterans,” Conrad said. “With Democrats in control, we will have different priorities.”

To accomplish those reductions, Bush would allow only modest growth in the government programs outside of defense and homeland security. He is proposing eliminations or sharp reductions in 141 government programs, for a savings over five years of $12 billion, although Congress has rejected many of the same proposals over the past two years.

Bush’s budget would achieve nearly $100 billion in savings over five years by trimming increases in Medicare, the health insurance program for 43 million retirees and disabled, and Medicaid which provides health care to the poor.

I hate this man. Greedy asshole. He will pay for his wars and fund tax cuts for the wealthy while killing social programs and putting this nation in further debt. When will we wake up and realize that we are heading toward feudalism with the ever widening gap between the rich and the poor. Sick.