Monday, President Bush sent his 2008 fiscal year spending budget to congress. In the budget Bush has proposed vast increases in military spending, along with enough money to pay for the war in Iraq and the troop increases, making his tax cuts permanent, eliminating the deficit in five years, and meanwhile still trying to pinch the rest of the governments spending into the budget.
Making the tax cuts permanent will add a cost of $1.6 trillion dollars over the next 10 years and adds $700 billion dollars in new military spending. Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota) who is now the Chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said, "the president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction"
Conrad also added, "this administration has the worst fiscal record in history and this budget does nothing to change that."
The savings to cut down the deficit would come from Medicaid and Medicare. $66 billion dollars would be cut over five years from Medicare and $13 billion dollars from Medicaid, a health program which gives aid to the poor who cannot afford it.
This budget is sure to draw a lot of criticism from the Democratically controlled congress. Bush made this statement about his budget; "My formula for a balanced budget reflects the priorities of our country at this moment in its history: protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism, keeping the economy strong with low taxes and keeping spending under control while making federal programs more effective."
Democrats have said that they will give the troops everything they will need to help the troops fight in Iraq and will look at the defense spending carefully.
Many of Bush's proposed cuts in government programs like Medicare and Medicaid in the past were rejected even by a Republican congress. It is unlikely that we will see many of these cuts in government programs.
No comments:
Post a Comment