Bush Asks Congress to OK $2.7T Budget 02/06/06

[AuntiBush]

Bush Asks Congress to OK $2.7 Trillion Budget
02/06/06 - The Detroit News

Homeland security, defense are big winners; he aims to make tax cuts permanent, halve deficit.

President Bush's 2007 budget proposes spending more than $2.7 trillion, showering big increases on defense and homeland security and a smattering of other favored programs such as scientific research, education and energy.

At the same time, Bush's blueprint being submitted to Congress today proposes shrinking or eliminating 141 programs while achieving $36 billion in Medicare savings over the next five years.

The plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 lays out a path to achieving two of the president's chief domestic goals: making permanent his first-term tax cuts and cutting the deficit in half by 2009, the year Bush leaves office.

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060206/POLITICS/602060304/1022

This is unbelieveable. Where does it end? They've taken us past broke for generations to come!

Edited to add More Links:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aoPSNBLcWlIA&refer=top_world_news


:kick:

[Benhurst]

1. The World's Only Superpower.

What a joke. A sick joke.

[shoelace414]

2. halfing the deficit?

so I guess Iraq and Afganistan will be on budget this year?

[pinniped]

3. Halve the old deficit or the new deficit?

Evil SOB.

There is no fucking way in hell this asshole can or will try to halve the deficit.

More smoke blowing out of his cornhole.

[tmooses]

4. When will people wake up to these criminals who are intent

on only one thing-making the corporate elite even more wealthy and more in control of the media. Bush's cuts will not effect any of his cabinet positions but will impact community policing, programs to prevent violence against women and vocational education. Now who do you think the programs target?

[SCRUBDASHRUB]

5. Article from Washington post on budget here.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/06/AR2006020600464.html

Utterly disgusting and completely evil, in my opinion.

<snip>

To accommodate increased spending in the president's favored non-security programs such as diplomacy and foreign aid, veterans health care and energy, other programs would face significant cuts. Agriculture spending would fall 6.5 percent, education spending $3.8 percent. The Department of Transportation would lose 9.4 percent of its discretionary budget. The Army Corps of Engineers -- a congressional favorite that was highly criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- would be cut 11.2 percent.

But the biggest savings would come from entitlement programs, in which spending rises and falls according to complex formulas that Congress would have to change to meet Bush's demands. The president proposed cutting Medicare by $36 billion over five years, and $105 billion over a decade -- mainly by cutting payments to providers such as hospitals. Federal child support enforcement payments would fall slightly, while Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program would lose $5 billion over five years and $12 billion over 10 years. Some of the savings Bush seeks were specifically rejected by Congress last year, such as tightening eligibility for food stamps and opening Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

And a slew of tax cuts, tax incentives and tax-cut extensions would cost the Treasury $1.7 trillion over the next decade, dwarfing the $172 billion in entitlement savings and proposed user fees in the budget. Bush also included the cost of his embattled plan to add private investment accounts to Social Security, at a cost to the Treasury of $82 billion in the first two years of the program and $172 billion over the first seven years.

All totaled, his proposals for entitlement programs -- including cuts, tax hikes and Social Security partial privatization -- would actually increase spending by $551 billion. But those costs are not reflected in Bush's deficit projections, since the president did not deduct the Social Security costs from the bottom line.

<snip>

[AuntiBush]

6. A Pathetic Disgrace!

Really!

Please kick for afternoon & evening crowd. Thanks all.

[AuntiBush]

8. They Mentioned on CSPAN earlier about cutting Social Security

I think they're hell-bent determined to destroy Medicare and Social Security.

I know of no one that's ever witnessed such a "worst-ever, administration, ever!"

[AuntiBush]

7. More on Shrinking Medicare by 65 Billion

From the second link:

President George W. Bush sent Congress a $2.77 trillion budget request today that would shrink spending for Medicare and other entitlement programs by $65 billion over five years as defense and homeland security funds surge. This year's deficit forecast is a record $423 billion.

The Defense Department budget for the fiscal year that starts Oct. 1 would increase 6.9 percent over Bush's last budget, to $439.3 billion. That figure, the seventh consecutive increase in Pentagon spending, doesn't include an extra $120 billion the president wants for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next.

The 2007 budget plan, the biggest in U.S. history, projects the economy will grow 3.3 percent in 2007, compared with the forecast of 3.4 percent growth this year. After hitting a new high in 2006, the administration expects the deficit will fall to $354 billion in 2007.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aoPSNBLcWlIA&refer=top_world_news