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“In two weeks, I will send you a budget that funds the war, protects the homeland, and meets important domestic needs, while limiting the growth in discretionary spending to less than 4 percent. This will require that Congress focus on priorities, cut wasteful spending, and be wise with the people’s money. By doing so, we can cut the deficit in half over the next five years.” George W. Bush, State of the Union Bush is spending a lot, on credit.

Bush also talked about priorities. A 2001 PEW Research Centre Survey asked this question of 1,513 Americans:

“What do you think is the most important problem facing the country today?”

12% Morality/Ethics/Family values
11% Education
08% Justice system/Crime/Gangs/
07% Economy (general)
06% Unemployment/Lack of jobs
06% Drugs/Alcohol
06% Health Care/Cost/Availability of

3% said Tax Cuts
0% said Iraq

I think that Bush needs to ‘focus on priorities, cut wasteful spending, and be wise with the people’s money’

I was reading this CNN Article.

This is a report from Slate’s summary of the daily papers

The Washington Post and USA Today lead with the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s latest report, which guesstimates that the deficit will total $1.9 trillion over the next decade. That’s nearly a trillion more than projected five months ago—mostly attributable to new legislation—and about a $3 trillion swing from a year ago (due to a mix of tax cuts and new spending). It also may be low. For one thing, the model assumes that discretionary spending will increase by only 2.5 percent annually. The past three years, such spending has grown by an average of seven percent.

In a point that the Post hits hardest, the budget basically hinges on whether Congress will agree to President Bush’s call to make his tax cuts permanent. If the cuts stay temporary, the CBO projects that the government will eventually climb out of the red. But if Congress votes to make the cuts permanent, deficits would likely continue indefinitely and the government will take on about $2 trillion in debt over the next decade.

In comments that none of the papers emphasize, the CBO’s head, a former Bush administration economist, said that leaving the cuts in place wouldn’t just be expensive, in the long-term they would actually hurt (a.k.a. have “a modestly negative” impact) the economy.

A Post editorial all-but accuses the White House’s budget crunchers of lunching on peyote and mushrooms.

… this is from the CATO Institute, which is a Conservative think tank

Between fiscal years 2001 and 2004, total federal outlays will rise by about 24 percent, even without the recently passed $87 billion supplemental bill for Iraq. Real discretionary spending increases in fiscal years 2002, 2003, and 2004 are 3 of the 10 biggest annual increases in the last 40 years. Large spending increases have been the principal cause of the government’s return to massive budget deficits in recent years.

Although defense spending has increased in response to the war on terrorism, President Bush has made little attempt to restrain nondefense spending to offset the higher Pentagon budget. Nondefense discretionary outlays will increase about 31 percent during President Bush’s first three years in office. Congress has failed to contain the administration’s overspending and has added new spending of its own. It is clear that Republicans have forfeited any claim of being the fiscally responsible party in Washington.