It's not a year ago, but President Bush thinks it is. Despite poll numbers wallowing in the tepid low-40s, Bush unveiled a budget proposal yesterday characterized by the exact same brand of fiscal irresponsibility he pursued a year ago when his so-called "mandate" was fresh and at least slightly credible.
Particularly egregious is the budget deficit - projected to reach a record-high $423 billion by the end of 2006.
Bush and his budget advisors continue to tout a plan they claim will cut the deficit in half before he leaves office in 2009. However, supposed deficit reductions over the next few years are based on extremely fuzzy math, including fudged tax-cut calculations, deficit targets that have already been missed, exceedingly modest estimates for Iraq war spending and a rosy assumption that the economy won't flounder anytime soon. The White House seems oblivious as to the dangerous economic road it's traveling.
Congressional Democrats are gearing up for a fight, hoping to translate the budget proposal's more contentious cuts and handouts into viable campaign issues. In many areas, we can only hope they are able to garner enough popular outrage to enact positive change, or at least force Bush to abandon his more destructive plans.
The proposal tries to make permanent Bush's first tax cuts, the paste jewel in the crown of his economic agenda. We should be wary, both of the contentious (indeed, totally unproven) efficacy of supply-side economics and the detriment the tax cuts could inflict on the federal government's discretionary spending capabilities.
According to Representative John Spratt of South Carolina, ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee, "if the Bush tax cut agenda is enabled, the revenue loss over 10 years is $1.8 trillion." Thinking of all the programs that will suffer from that loss of tax revenue is more than a little disheartening.
The proposed budget is particularly damaging to domestic programs. Medicare growth is set to be constrained enough to save an astonishing $36 billion over the next five years, while other entitlements programs will see similar, although less drastic, limitations-just as the baby boomer generation starts to retire. In other words, Bush wants to cut backing for the nation's most reliable support systems just before more Americans need them than ever before.
Other long-running programs are set not merely to be slashed, but actually cut out of the budget entirely. In his State of the Union address, Bush announced the American Competitiveness Initiative, a laudable plan to improve science and math education in American schools. Unfortunately, this project comes at the loss of vocational training programs and programs to prepare minority and poor students for college.
As we should expect, the more proactive ideas Bush announced in the State of the Union find only mediocre support in his budget. The nuclear energy program - a key facet of Bush's plan to curb U.S. reliance on oil from the Middle East - is quadrupled in funding, but this is still less than half of one percent of the proposed budget for operations in Iraq.
In fact, the only budget items that see any significant expansion in funding are those related to the military or domestic security. Defense spending, not including outlays for the American efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, is set to rise to just under $440 billion. Democrats will necessarily avoid challenging this part of the budget, understandably afraid of seeming soft on national security in an election year. It's a sad reality that election politics always overwhelm rational spending decisions.
Stepping back, the picture that Bush has painted with this proposed budget is colored with exactly the kinds of inconsistencies and disappointments we've come to expect from him. Maybe it is a year ago, because judging from this budget, Bush has learned nothing.
