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Bush budget to boost military, widen budget gap (Roundup)
Feb 4, 2008, 23:38 GMT
House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt (R), with U.S. Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (L), explains a graphic about U.S. President George W. Bush\'s Fiscal Year 2009 Budget during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. USA 04 February 2008. President Bush is sending Congress an US$3 trillion (2.02 trillion euro) budget that provides a big boost to defense and protects his signature tax cuts. EPA/SHAWN THEW
Washington - US President George W Bush proposed a record 3- trillion-dollar budget Monday that would boost military spending by about 7 per cent, slow the growth of social programmes and sharply widen the government deficit.
Administration officials estimate that Bush's last annual spending plan as president would cut the annual growth rate for Medicare - health insurance for the elderly - to 5 per cent over the next five years from about 7 per cent. Health care spending for the poor would also slow.
The Pentagon's general budget would rise to 515.4 billion dollars, the 11th consecutive year of increase. In addition, Bush is separately seeking 70 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, the federal deficit would grow to about 400 billion dollars in 2009 after shrinking for three years in a row.
Bush said the budget's 'top priority is to defend our country.' He insisted his goal of a balanced budget by 2012 remains intact.
But in an election year, his plan to increase the deficit while limiting social programmes is likely to face stiff resistance in Congress, where opposition Democrats hold majorities in both chambers.
As a lame duck whose term ends next January, Bush's ability to twist arms in Congress - including among members of his own Republican Party concerned about fiscal discipline - appears limited.
Democratic leaders rejected Bush's plan. They blasted him for running up the five largest deficits in US history during his term, which began in 2001, and targetting budget cuts at needy Americans.
'Most of these cuts affect critical needs and are unlikely to generate sufficient support to become law,' said John Spratt, head of the budget committee in the House of Representatives.
'Even if they did become law, they are more than offset by this budget's tax cuts and increased defense spending, making the deficits grow even larger,' he said in a statement.
Bush's budget, which covers the fiscal year starting October 2008, includes a 150-billion-dollar package of emergency tax incentives for US consumers and businesses in an effort to fight the risk of a recession. Meanwhile, 151 federal programmes would be cut or ended.
In a 21st-century break with tradition, it was the first paperless government budget, filed to Congress entirely electronically.
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Older Talkback
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This budget is really 10 steps over the line. I can not get over the waste.
Typical of a Republican't. Make a mess of everything and then leave it up to others to clean it up. What did we expect out of this Texas bumpkin?
keep in mind that mr. bush has a drug problem .
he can't help it that he is sick
he needs help .
Within 5 years the U.S. credit rating may have problems, and that would have far-reaching impacts for the economy. Countries holding dollars could elect to go to Euros, and the oil-producing nations could ask for payment in Euros. Bush's budget is all phony bookkeeping based on assumed economic strength that will not be there. Just as he's done for the past years, military spending will require supplementals to provide the necessary funds, instead of stating the true costs right in the budget.
The next President should make him testify before Congress as to this fiscal fraud being perpetrated. Any voter who believes that tax cuts, in the face of an economic decline, will boost revenue is too stupid to qualify to vote. Businesses create jobs because they can forecast a PROFIT, and tax cuts are incidental - just as the public spending over the past years was financed primarily by mortgage refinancing, NOT by tax cuts. In 2007 alone, mortgage refi's raised $600 billion.
Bush blew a perfectly reasonable starting position in terms of the 2000 surplus, and now has the nation deep in a hole from which it cannot extricate itself - the banks still have no idea of the value of anything related to mortgages, or various other instruments based on home values. There will be a lot more foreclosures in 2008, and in some cities banks are actually abandoning foreclosed properties, because the tenants and others gutted the houses, and it's cheaper to walk away than to fix houses no one wants. Instant slums, thanks to the mortgage mess.
ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hlkG9t2Z4m8UfIya6iQ3-TfTPhRwD8UJON580
Bush Budget Would Bring Record Deficits
By ANDREW TAYLOR – 5 hours ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.
The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.
Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.
But even those figures are optimistic since they depend on rosy economic forecasts and leave out the full costs of the war in Iraq. The White House predicts the economy will grow at a 2.7 percent clip this year, far higher than congressional and private economists expect, and the administration's $70 billion figure for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply a placeholder until the next president takes office.
Bush's lame-duck budget plan is likely to be ignored by Congress, which is controlled by Democrats and already looking ahead to November elections. His long-term projections are mostly academic since he's leaving office next January. The president forecasts a $48 billion surplus by 2012, keeping a promise he made two years ago when strong revenue predictions made it look far easier. Now, he's relying on spending cuts — for everything from transportation to Medicare and Medicaid to nonprofit groups that help the poor — to do the job in order to keep his signature 2001 and 2003 tax cuts intact instead of expiring at the end of 2010.
Democrats said the forecast of a budget surplus in 2012 was based on flawed math that included only $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 and no money after that. The budget plan also fails to include any provisions after this year for keeping the alternative minimum tax, originally aimed at the wealthy, from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fixing the AMT in 2012 would cost $118 billion, more than double the surplus Bush is projecting for that year.
I thought Republicans were the party of fiscal responsibility! Why do Republicans despise Bill Clinton so much? I have yet to hear an answer that does not include what he did with Monica. Unless you have been living in a cave for the past 7 years, Bush and crew have destroyed our country economically, politically, and socially. Yet Bill Clinton left office with a surplus? I really would like to know why Republicans fear a Democrat in the Oval Office.
With an outstanding $9Tril deficit this can only be possible by borrowing even MORE money from China and Japan.
This 'Jonah' you call a President has already borrowed FAR more than the US can possibly EVER repay.
Its not surprising then, that the US% has already lost 41% of its value against the Euro over the last few years.
In the World Market, Europe and the Far East are already switching over to the EURO as the more stable and reliable currency.
Meanwhile: Bush continues to borrow even more, and more, and more....
and more.......
I feel really sorry for the next President who will be left with this inherited financial quagmire of global proportions.
G.W.Bush is certainly the WORST President in US history.
'the US$(dollar) has already lost 41% of its value'
Ever wonder nowadays,why your far more likely to see a TOYOTA than a Ford in the US?...think about it?..(it's do do with borrowing huge sums of money}
As a study revealed that 100.000 lives could be saved every year if better health care were provided ,this seems to be no topic in the race for the presidency by the republican candidates .I don't understand that trillions of dollars are pumped in your defense industry to protect the USA from a largely overrated terrorist threat,whilst saving 100.000 lives every year thanks to better health care is absolutely not important to these guys .
Am I being cynical when I pretend that because the lobbies that support the republican party have nothing to gain from better health care,it is ignored by them ?Squandering the wealth of the richest nation in the world in useless weapons is a disgrace .It is ruining the population to boost the profits of the corporate tycoons that form the military industrial complex,something that Dwight Eisenhower already warned against more than 20 years ago.
Some more of the Bush regime achievements -
In the USA nearly 40 million people live in poverty—the largest percentage in the industrialized world.
Nearly one in four children lives below the poverty line.
The U.S. ranks 29th in the world in infant mortality.
High school graduation rates in the U.S. are not in the top ten of industrialized nations.
One in nine Americans is functionally-illiterate.
Sixty-five percent of Americans believe God created humans. The percentage believing Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is the lowest of any industrialized nation.
American high school students rank 28th in math, but believe themselves to be first.
Life expectancy in the U.S. lags behind France, Japan, Canada, Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Singapore, and Spain.
The infant mortality rate in Washington, D.C. is higher than India.
In the Economic Freedom index, a measure of freedom from governmental intervention and restriction, the USA came tenth.
The United States has the world’s largest trade deficit.
United States teens lead the world in obesity, as defined by body-mass index.
China graduates ten times as many engineers per year as Americans. Even per capita, China’s number is higher.
america needs another 9-11 to wake it up
Do you even understand that the tax cuts given to 0.3 percent of americans are higher than the combined federal budgets of primary ans secondary education .What happened to your priorities ?
Re:'What happened to your priorities ?'
First, you are not taking cognizance of how much money we ALREADY spend on education in the United States. Exxon alone contributed nine billion dollars to the Texas school system. That was just Exxon, Tonny, it did not include contributions made by all the other oil companies and all the other manufacturers based in Texas. On top of that the, the State of Texas collected billions in the form of property taxes which are aimed directly at the school system. Then there is the Lottery, all of that revenue, and it is enormous, was supposed to go into our education system. Do we have a decent education system? No, we don't, but the shortcomings have absolutely nothing to do with a lack of money. The school system is swimming in cash.
Secon, the priority was increased revenues and the Federal government, contrary to the screaming and gnashing of teeth by Democrats who are being led by Nancy Pelosi, is swimming in cash. The proble we have is what our legislature and our President saw fit to do with all that cash.
The tax cuts haven't hurt a gorramned thing. Our politicians cannot absolve themselves this time. For years we elected Democrats and they made a mess of the Nation's finance. WE threw them out and replaced them with Goopers and guess what? The Goopers made a mess of the Nation's finances. So we threw the Goopers out and gave the Demmies the majority and what have they done? They have made mess of the Nation's finances.
This mess has been made by PARTISAN politics. The needs of the country are being ignored in the name of getting elected, and that is all there is to it. There is no need for additional taxation in the US. What we need to do is fire all of the incumbents. Perhaps then, without their deleterious influence, we will have a legislature with the will to fix things instead sabotaging one another for political gain.
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JeffFeb 5th, 2008 - 00:28:27
Unbelievable - I can't find the words to really describe how I feel!
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