Bush’s Budget Priorities: Fund War, Provide Tax Breaks for the Rich, Deprive the Poor

[marmar]

From the Progressive:


Bush’s Budget Priorities: Fund War, Provide Tax Breaks for the Rich, Deprive the Poor
By Matthew Rothschild
February 6, 2007

You can see Bush’s skewed priorities when you examine his proposed budget.

He wants to spend $481 billion on the Pentagon next year, and that doesn’t even include the $145 billion he is requesting for his little adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was the objective of the Project for a New American Century to get Pentagon spending up to $500 billion a year. With this budget request, it now will stand at $626 billion. And that doesn’t even include the tens of billions of dollars that the Department of Energy spends on nuclear weapons.

Bush’s budget would give people with incomes of more than $1 million an average tax cut of $162,000 a year by 2012, while those in the middle fifth of the income scale would get a mere $840 a year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Here’s another way of looking at the lopsided distribution of tax benefits: The top 1 percent would enjoy 31 percent of the tax cuts, the bottom 40 percent just 4 percent, the center points out.

That’s redistribution of income, from bottom to top.

Meantime, Bush is proposing cutting aid to low-income people struggling to pay high winter heating bills. Here in the Upper Midwest, as well as New England, we’re in the deep freeze now, and we’re feeling the pinch of high heating bills already. People need relief from these bills, and Bush wants to take it away. .....(more)

The rest of the piece is at: http://www.progressive.org/node/4508

[Double T]

1. bushco's budget should be DOA.............

NOW is the time for Congress to take a stand across the board.

[hashibabba]

2. Here's additional information:

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/apps/nl/content2.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=1331575&ct=3524633

The Progress Report

by Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney,
Amanda Terkel, and Payson Schwin

BUDGET
In Deep Hock

President Bush yesterday sent Congress his 2008 budget, a $2.9 trillion behemoth. The biggest winner is the Defense Department, which would receive an 11 percent boost in funding. Wealthy Americans would also receive a handsome payoff if the President's tax cuts are made permanent, as the budget calls for. The biggest losers are ordinary Americans, who would see sharp cuts to health care, education, environmental programs, and development assistance. Additionally, this budget shows that Bush's commitment to fiscal discipline -- like his commitment to eradicating inequality -- is nothing more than empty rhetoric. "According to the president's own numbers," Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policies John Irons writes, "the proposed tax policies would add $600 billion to deficits over the next five years, and $1.9 trillion over the next ten." President Bush has "consistently understated the effect on deficits and debt of their budget, and unfortunately America is going being to be in deep hock after this administration leaves town," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND) said yesterday.

DESTROYING AMERICA'S FISCAL FUTURE: Bush claims that his 2008 budget is fiscally responsible because it will balance the federal budget by 2012. But as the Washington Post notes, Bush's "balance is more illusory than real." The $77 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are unlikely to receive broad support from either party in Congress. He does not account for Iraq war costs beyond 2008, nor does he "include the cost of extending changes to the Alternative Minimum Tax beyond 2008," which "would top $90 billion in 2012 alone." It also "assumes the government will collect far more revenue than the Congressional Budget Office projects, amounting to a $150 billion difference in 2012." Judd Gregg (R-NH), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, admitted, "I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs."

MISPLACED PRIORITIES ON DEFENSE: Bush's defense requests for 2008 total $716.5 billion, including $481.4 billion for the Pentagon's budget, an 11 percent increase from its current level. He also asked for "an additional $100 billion for Iraq and the global war on terrorism this year, on top of $70 billion already sought." For 2008, the budget includes spending of $145 billion and $50 billion in 2009, "although administration officials conceded that the 2008 and 2009 requests could go higher depending on the progress of the war effort." According to the Congressional Research Service, total spending on the Iraq war for fiscal years 2001 through 2006 was $318.5 billion. The Bush budget would bring total proposed spending in Iraq to $683 billion through 2009, eclipsing the amount spent ($662 billion) in the 10-year Vietnam War. Another $140 billion is allocated for weapons procurement, research, and development. As the New York Times notes, much of this money is wasted on "products of cold war strategic thinking have outlived their rationale in a world with no superpower arms race." For example, Bush asks for $4.6 billion to purchase 20 more F-22A Raptor fighters, which was "originally designed for air-to-air combat against Soviet-style MIG fighters" and is "arguably the most unnecessary weapon system currently built by the Pentagon."

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This was also on the front page today:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2716263

In his budget request, Mr. Bush expresses alarm about what he calls “the unsustainable growth of federal entitlement programs,” and he proposes savings in Medicare and Medicaid that far surpass what he or any other president has sought.

THE PRESIDENT CONTENDS THAT HE CAN MAKE THE RULE CHANGES WITHOUT ANY ACTION BY CONGRESS.