Bush: The $3 Trillion Dollar Man
Here are some bullet points regarding the new federal budget to be released on Monday:
- The Bush administration will introduce yet another irresponsible federal budget, which this year features a huge $400 billion deficit and spending that tops $3 trillion. Amazingly, President Bush was also in office when federal spending topped $2 trillion (back in 2002).
- President Bush promises once again that the budget will be balanced sometime down the road, but he again uses phony accounting to make that claim. For one thing, he hasn’t accounted for future relief from the alternative minimum tax (AMT), which Congress will surely provide. Also, Bush has not included all the likely future Iraq war costs in his budget.
- To his credit, President Bush proposes some savings to Medicare and Medicaid, two of the largest and fastest growing federal programs.
- But to his discredit, the president asks for yet another large and unaffordable defense spending increase for 2009.
- All in all, the new budget tops off eight years of remarkably spendthrift policies by President Bush. Over eight years, Bush has presided over a huge 67 percent increase in total federal outlays. The comparable figure for President Clinton’s eight years was just 32 percent.
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