The Washington Post's editorial board has been one of George W. Bush's big boosters--in an eyes-closed-to-reality beyond-reason fashion--for most of the past three years, giving him the benefit of the doubt for reasons that have seemed incomprehensible to me.
Now there are finally signs of buyer's remorse:
washingtonpost.com: Skewed Priorities: IF THE FEDERAL budget is a mirror of national priorities, consider this skewed choice in President Bush's spending plan: By 2009, child care assistance would be cut for at least 200,000 children in low- and moderate-income families -- and that's by the administration's own estimates. The real number of children affected could be as high as 365,000. That same year, those with annual incomes of $1 million or more would be paying an average of $155,000 less in income taxes as a result of Mr. Bush's tax cuts.
This is no isolated example. The administration proposes almost nothing to tackle the mandatory spending programs that now eat up nearly two-thirds of the $2.4 trillion budget. It insists that Mr. Bush's tax cuts be made permanent, at a cost of nearly $1 trillion over the next decade. That means programs for the poorest and most vulnerable would be cut -- not just failing to keep pace with inflation but suffering declines in the amounts allocated to them.
Because the administration would increase spending on defense, homeland security and international affairs, what's left on the discretionary chopping block is less than one-sixth of the federal budget. Spending on such programs would be essentially frozen in 2005. With boosts in some areas, such as space flight, other programs would be subject to deeper reductions. Some are sensible, if politically difficult to achieve; funding for the Army Corps of Engineers, for example, would be cut by 13 percent by eliminating earmarked programs.
But others are troubling. The number of families served by the low-income housing voucher program could drop by more than 250,000; a program to transform run-down public housing projects into mixed-income neighborhoods would be eliminated. Yet that's not the draconian part of the administration's plan. The truly painful cuts would come down the road; by 2009, the slice of the budget that reflects discretionary spending outside of defense and homeland security would fall from $391 billion in 2005 to $386 billion in 2009. Adjusted for expected inflation, the cut would be $50 billion. The administration does its best to obscure the real harm these reductions would entail. For this election-year budget, it finds room for politically attractive increases. The budget boasts, for example, that disadvantaged school districts and special education each get an extra $1 billion in 2005. What it doesn't say is that in the following years, money would be cut; the budget documents contemplate that the funding for these programs, and for education in general, would actually be lower in 2009 than in 2005.
The budget documents obscure the impact of cuts by omitting the usual tables that list program-by-program spending for following years. While such projections have been included in budgets for the last three decades, this administration simply disappears them -- a maneuver that lets the administration claim credit for its supposed fiscal discipline without being blamed for the callousness of its choices. Only in reams of computer data transmitted to Congress -- and analyzed by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities -- are the implications of its budget plans to be found.
The administration says it isn't actually proposing such cuts -- that the exact mix of domestic spending will be worked out on a year-by-year basis. Ordinarily, there wouldn't be any reason to take an administration's budget proposals beyond the coming year particularly seriously. But the administration wants Congress to lock into law strict caps on overall discretionary spending for the next five years that would entail precisely these kinds of hard choices. Eliminating the Bush tax cuts just for taxpayers with incomes of more than $500,000 would pay for the reductions the administration is proposing in domestic spending in 2009. To insist on making tax cuts for the rich permanent under these circumstances is unconscionable.
You are really late to the party, guys. Let's hope for all our sakes that you are planning on bringing a lot of refreshments.
Posted by DeLong at February 8, 2004 08:36 AM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postThis election campaign is going to be a photo-editor's dream.
I watched Bush play patta-cake with Tim Russert this morning, and even with soft Russert -- the man who put the fat in fatuous -- questioning him, Bush gave us precious flashes of deer-in-the-headlights, maniac-with-a-button, and other great visuals that he has clearly trained himself to suppress. He can't suppress them fast enough for even the slow 30 times per second of backward raster TV. It doesn't take high-speed digital to catch the guy in all his full expressiveness.
Lee Strasberg hould be living at this time: what a joy it would have been to him to see this man playing President, yea unto the moments when the mask slips.
What disturbs me about this editorial and so many like it is the authors don’t directly talk about what they want cut from Bush’s spending agenda. They talk about how to increase taxes, and the places they want to increase spending.
Is any mainstream non-Libertarian (but I repeat myself) voice coming out and saying what should be cut?
Say you could make up half of your deficit reduction goal in tax increases, what would you cut from the budget to make up the other half?
What the establishment press loves the most is a moderate Republican. Well, GWB is not a moderate-- and, it seems, not much of a Republican, either.
Posted by: Matt on February 8, 2004 10:31 AMBush is a dysphrenetic (sp). What'd you expect? He can't comprehend the language, so they prep him with a pre-scripted interview, even then, he's so dysphasic and phrenetic, he can't sit still. It's written all over his face. ADHD.
Another life, he'd grow up in the projects.
I have a friend who used to work for HeadStart
and now volunteers to counsel single parents.
His stories are absolutely riveting, putting
anything from the Great Society Era into stark
contrast. The poor today are living in H-E-L-L.
Stomach-churning even to hear the tales.
How evil of these neo-liberals to push more in,
& psychophant (sp) media allies to edit it out.
Memorize these to capture the real "visual"
President Bush = "dsyphrenetic"
Conservative Media = "psychophant"
Read Burn's 'Address of Beelzebub', as the Devil advises the Privileged, how, in the form of neo-Calvinism, to deal with poor and disadvantaged:
"An' whare will ye get Howes and Clintons
To bring them (the poor) to a right repentance-
To cowe the rebel generation,
An' save the honour o' the nation?
They, an' be d-d! what right hae they
To meat, or sleep, or light o' day?
Far less-to riches, pow'r, or freedom,
But what your Lordship likes to gie them?
--
But smash them! crash them a' to spails,
An' rot the dyvors i' the jails!
The young dogs, swinge them to the labour;
Let wark an' hunger mak them sober!"1
Sound familiar?
1 - http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/Beelzebub.html
Posted by: Ree Edit on February 8, 2004 11:20 AMRob Sperry:
Sure there are cuts. Here is one insignificant mainstream non-libertarians short list, that could be done without even making the big changes in bush programs. This is just nibbling around the edges and attacking the principle absurdities"
1. From the medicare drug benefit: cut the 30% premium for private plans -why do they need it since they supposedly will provide the services more efficiently than the government?
2. From the medicare drug benefit: allow government purchasers to bargain for price cuts, that will indirectly reduce outlays in the future.
3. Cut the outrageous agricultural subsidies, and target the ones that remain towards small and medium sized independent farms.
4. Cut the fossil fuel production subsidies (both current and those pending in the energy bill)
5. Cut some of the expensive cold war weapons programs (do we need three new advanced fighters?)
6. Cut the missile defense program production money, and stick with R&D until we know whether it works and what it will be good for
7. Cut some of the Bush social programs -the silly marriage promotion education plan for example.
A lot of mainstream non-libertarians would agree with this. And you can read this in the mainstream press editorials, so there are significant mainstream non-libertarians who would agree.
I'm not all that educated on economics. But it don't take no education to see we are head for a big domestic manure pile. True, warm the winter long. But damn! The smell takes getting use to.
Posted by: Rook on February 8, 2004 01:42 PMProf, you know why the Washington Post has been so Bush-friendly, you just don't want to acknowledge it.
Like so many, they had so convinced themselves of the perfidiousness of bill clinton that the mere act of replacing him elevated his successor beyond criticism, because who, after all, could, in the wapo's editorial mind, be worse than bill clinton?
Posted by: howard on February 8, 2004 04:58 PMIf I may take some us us back to our (hopefully not mis-spent) youths, the last time I recall a President's budget receiving this sort of LOL DOA treatment from both sides of the aisle was Jimmy Carter's opening bid in 1980. And we remember (some of us with glee!) how that turned out.
At some point I presume the Reps will mount what looks like a campaign, but right now, the search for the WMDs seems to have morphed into a search for the Emperor's clothes.
Posted by: Tom Maguire on February 9, 2004 02:47 PMWe are as God made us, and often a great deal worse.
Posted by: Wilson Dean on May 3, 2004 07:25 AMI am a hobo in the house of the lord.
Against boredom even the gods contend in vain.
The lesser of two evils is still evil.
Posted by: Bailey Jake on June 30, 2004 09:41 AMNoli equi dentes inspicere donati - Do not look a gift horse in the mouth. (St. Jerome)
Unitas mirabile vinculum - The wonderful bond of unity
Aut disce aut discede - Either learn or leave
Illiud Latine dici non potest - You can't say that in Latin
Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis - Unless you will have believed, you will not understand. (St. Augustine)
Una voce - With one voice, unanimously
Raptus regaliter - Royally screwed