Krugman - Another Bogus Budget

[Dover]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/03/opinion/03KRUG.html

February 3, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Another Bogus Budget
By PAUL KRUGMAN

Well, whaddya know. Even as the Republican leadership strong-armed the Medicare drug bill through Congress, the administration was sitting on estimates showing that the plan would cost at least $134 billion more than it let on. But let's not make too much of the incident. After all, it's not as if our leaders make a habit of faking their budget projections. Oh, wait.

The budget released yesterday, which projects a $521 billion deficit for fiscal 2004, is no more credible than its predecessors. When the administration promises much lower deficits in future years, remember this: two years ago it projected a fiscal 2004 deficit of only $14 billion. What's new this time is that the administration has decided to pay lip service to conservative complaints about runaway spending.

Over the past few months, many pundits have obediently placed the onus for rising deficits on "a vast increase in discretionary domestic spending," or words to that effect. By the way, the Heritage Foundation, which has orchestrated this campaign, is cagier than those pundits; it covers itself by relying on innuendo, never saying outright that domestic discretionary spending is the source of the deficit.

To mollify these critics, the new budget purports to shrink real domestic discretionary spending. This won't happen; even if it did, it would have a negligible impact on the deficit. But it isn't just a fake solution — it's a response to a fake problem....cont'd

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. Fake solution to a fake problem.

Talk about misdirection. Thank God we have Krugman out there to sort it out for us. I wish his articles were also reprinted in the Wall Street Journal.

[FredrickDouglass]

2. Why Won't The Political Opposition Attack This S**t!?!?!?

I just don't get it. With all of this ammo, it seems that even the most dull could come up with a line of ads that would easily sink any Bush re-election efforts. Why don't these guys attack those criminals?
Seems like they're setting us up for another close one, that will this time come down to Guliani's, the new VP, home state, New York.

[ozymandius]

3. Give it time.

It's a bit too early for the Dem nominee to start hammering these details.

Funny, though, Daschle was on the radio lambasting Bush's proposals toslash education, EPA funding, and HHS in favor of giving the DoD a 7% boost.

[dennis4868]

4. because...

Dems are spineless...don't you know that? God forbid they should hold bush accountable for 911, Iraq war, the economy, etc...

[Virgil]

5. What does the Democratic Party stand for?

Don't they have a mission statement? The Democrats are just a different faction of corporate servants than the Republicans. Bush of course was a thug and a robber. A lot of Democrats were needed to vote on bills that needed a supermajority and they all went through.