This Budget Don't Fly, Even conservatives Won't Give It Wings.

[reprehensor]

Yea, verily, though I despise the Washington Post heartily, I shall post this link in the hopes that Dionne cranks it up a notch. To '11' preferably...

Holes in a Web of Budget Deceit

Friday, February 11, 2005; Page A25

Let us stand back in awe at the Bush administration's genius. Few administrations in our history have been more successful in setting the terms of the political debate. None has been as skilled at getting its facts accepted as plausible even when they are not. None has looked so principled, even when it said one thing while doing another.

snip

What's particularly ingenious about the administration's approach is that it throws out so many questionable claims at once that its opponents are left fuming, furious, sputtering -- and easily dismissed as "Bush haters." First the administration understates how much long-term borrowing its Social Security privatization plan will require. Then it claims to have made deep cuts in the deficit when in fact its less-touted tax cut proposals ($1.4 trillion over 10 years) will just ramp the deficit back up again. And you never know on any given day what the new cost estimates of that prescription drug benefit will look like.

snip

And at least some of the president's supporters are perfectly candid about the game that is being played. So I offer three hearty cheers for my conservative friends on the Wall Street Journal's editorial page. Writing on Tuesday -- beneath a cheeky headline, "Hooray for the Deficit" -- the Journal's opiners argued that "the much-loathed budget 'deficit' is the main, and perhaps the only, reason we may finally get some federal spending restraint."

snip

Every commentator and reporter should thank these editorialists and shout, "Free at last!" All the pious claims by less candid conservatives that they and their president truly care about the deficit can now be ignored. The whole point (and, yes, this happened in the 1980s, too) is to create deficits, followed by a "crisis," followed by demands for cuts in domestic programs, especially in those "federal outlays" for low-income people.

more@link


Now, that's more like it.

[LeaderlessResistance]

1. George Bush Was Wrong About Arming Pilots As Well

The Bush Administration did everything to stop this. He'd rather waste millions on high priced Federal Sky Marshals. His policies equate to irresponsible governing.


Armed Pilots Now Outnumber Air Marshals


In his State of the Union address, President Bush singled out federal air marshals--undercover armed agents who fly on U.S. airlines--for helping make "our homeland safer." But he neglected to mention a flying security force that has quietly grown even larger than the marshals: the nation's pilots.

Two years ago, the Federal Flight Deck Officer program began training pilots who wanted to carry guns on flights to protect the cockpit. Aviation sources tell TIME that more than 4,000 pilots are authorized to carry guns, and each day they fly armed on more flights than do air marshals. The gun-toting pilots, who fly unidentified, now constitute the fourth-largest federal law-enforcement group in the U.S.

Pilots in the program, as well as the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which runs it, claim it has been a big success. They want us to protect aircraft, but they don't want to pay much for it, cover us for injuries or even really treat us as law-enforcement officers.


Full story:

By Sally B. Donnelly

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1025147,00.html

[applegrove]

2. What are they going to do? Allow bankruptsy of the government?