Bush did not include any spending for Afghanistan and Iraq after September in next year's budget to partially mask the huge budget deficit. He pulled some other shenanigans to make it look "less" than it really is. Even then the Budget deficit he is expecting next year is $521 billion. In reality it may be closer to 550 billion and may even approach 600 billion. In four years, Bush and his irresponsible Republicans controlling the House and Senate have turned a budget surplus, which was on target to pay off the national debt in ten years or so, into massive amounts of red ink that has our national debt soaring out of control. Basically Republican fiscal policy goes like this: give millionaires huge tax breaks, start two wars, pay for the occupation of a major country, vote in a huge drug prescription plan, and guess how they plan to pay for it all? They will simply borrow the money to do it. Hey folks it is the American way according to the Republicans: you can have it all--just borrow and let future generations pay for our party we are all having now. In three short years, we have lost 2.3 million jobs and have gone from possibly paying off the national debt to running huge out of control budget deficits. These Republicans are geniuses, aren't they?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4093-2004Feb1.html?nav=hptop_tb There is a link to Bush's budget, or "you can have it all, in two hundred and fifty easy payments over the next fifty years or so."
shenanigans ??? Damn we got to do something about the dreaded shenanigans :shock: not to mention the run-amuck Tom foolery! :shock: I'm not worried about the Republicans and Bush, they'll win again hands down. What concerns me is your inability to see that the majority of everyone here is laughing their asses off at you. :shock:
I'm sure the conservatives have a plan for the deficit. If we can just free up the trust funders to be able to keep more of their daddy's money. And the prescription drug plan will surely cost less as the baby boomers retire.
Re: Re: Bush's Budget Deficit: well over $521 billion Dick Cheney told Paul O'Neil that "deficits don't matter, Reagan proved that." The Republican Party is apparently glued to "supply-side economics" which is simply a way of telling people they can have everything and not have to pay any taxes for it. As long as the Republican Party runs things, we will be swimming in red ink. Red Ink Republicans control their Party, and they control the country. Bush's Daddy and Clinton had to work years to get out of the irresponsible fiscal mess Reagan left before the economy could take off. And the right wing propagandists instead claim that anything good that has happened since 1980 is due to Reagan. In reality Reagan went on the same sort of spending spree this idiot in the White House is going on and he left his mess for others to clean up. Bush will do the same.
Re: Re: Re: Bush's Budget Deficit: well over $521 billion I'm not for putting Regan's likeness on every institution in America like some. I don't have the hatred for him either that you have. But Bush, Jr. is no Reagan. At the very least, whether you liked him or his ideas or not, at least Reagan had some ideas. Bush, Jr. is spending like crazy with no rhyme or reason and on social policies he is weak at best. He basically stands for nothing other than further enriching big business which is stagnating wages or laying off workers and further enriching trust funders by giving them tax break after tax break. On social policy, he is more interested in defending his rich elite white buddies like himself by protecting their slots in so-called top universities to the detriment of the middle class by not fighting against racial quotas. He's weak on gay marriages, apparently because he's afraid of the 8 members of the Log Cabin Republicans and Dick Cheney's bulldyke daughter. He claimed he wasn't for nation building but has injected the US into the biggest nation building project since post-WW2.
Bush's governing style is simply to do anything that will get him re-elected. He lets the oil companies re-write our pollution laws, protected the drug company profits in the drug bill and by denying people access to Canadian drugs, and let any other company that ponies up a large campaign contribution do anything it wants. He gave rich people huge tax breaks so they will give him more campaign contributions, and given Iraq to Halliburton. He is borrowing huge amounts of money and giving huge tax breaks. That is bad policy for America, but he might just buy off enough people to get himself re-elected. That is the goal.
I'm not a Bush-hater, but this budget deficit business bothers me. Cutting income while raising expenses is just irresponsible, anyway I look at it. The economy kept his dad from getting re-elected despite his Gulf War popularity. There is a lesson there for the son.
One update says that if the money for Iraq spending is included that Bush intentionally left out, you can add another $50 billion to the budget deficit next year. So you can expect $600 billion budget deficits for the next few years with the Republicans running things. They will make up for it however by sending perhaps a million more jobs overseas on top of the 2.3 million already gone.
