Remind me again, who're we waging war against?
I know Bush's budget came out a while ago now, but I have a hard enough time understanding the in's and the out's of my own budget, let alone the proposed budged of a nation. What can I say, I'm a literary critic cum theologian, gimme a break. I've typed and re-typed this post a half-dozen times now, and it just gets filled with more belligerence and and obscenties in each incarnation. I think I'll just let a few links speak for themselves, for the most part. I've ordered them according to my progression of emotion:
"President Bush hauled out the heavy artillery Monday, but not against Iraq or North Korea -- indeed, his budget made no mention of how he'll pay for any actions he may take in those places. Rather his $2.23-trillion spending proposal for 2004 declares war on the idea of a progressive tax code. In slashing taxes while dismissing the importance of deficits, the administration is pushing the most radical change in economic policy since Ronald Reagan, if not the New Deal." (Los Angeles Times)
"What does this mean? It means that the (not very bad) economic news of the past year coupled with the provisions the Bush Administration has put into its 2004 Budget will, if enacted, put the U.S. once more on the path to national bankruptcy. Once again the commitments of the government--to defense, administration of justice, the safety net, and the large elderly programs of Medicare and Social Security--will be far beyond the reach of federal revenues.
"Why would any administration deliberately unbalance the long-term finances of the federal government? Why would anybody want to set up a situation in which the taxpayers one and two generations hence will find themselves stuck with an enormous bill? Why set up a situation in which what HHS [Dept. of Health and Human Services] and SSA [Social Security Administration] tell potential beneficiaries of programs is radically inconsistent with what the White House and Treasury tell taxpayers about tax burdens?
"It really is beyond my comprehension why anyone would do this." (Brad DeLong)
"Days after the administration asked Congress for the biggest military budget since the Reagan-era buildup, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld told a Congressional panel today that the administration would soon request additional billions to fight terrorism and for any conflict with Iraq.
"Mr. Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that sending forces for a possible war had already cost $2.1 billion and that the Pentagon was spending $1.5 billion a month to fight terrorism. Those costs are not included in the current budget nor in the $380 billion request for 2004, and they would require a separate spending bill." (New York Times)
"Administration budgeteers have designed Bush's most prominent proposals so that much -- and, in some cases, virtually all -- of their costs fall outside the White House's five-year budget window. As a result, Bush has been able to propose gargantuan changes in everything from taxes to Medicare without having to explain how he would pay full freight for them." (Los Angeles Times)
"So where does Mr. Greenspan come in? Next week he will testify before the Senate Banking Committee. Will he, at long last, acknowledge the administration's fecklessness?
[. . .]
"As a famous fiscal scold, he can't adopt the administration's 'deficits, schmeficits' approach. And he can't make the supply-side claim that tax cuts actually increase revenues, when just two years ago he argued for a tax cut to reduce the surplus.
"If Mr. Greenspan nonetheless finds ways to rationalize Mr. Bush's irresponsibility, or if he takes refuge in Delphic utterances that could mean anything or nothing, history will remember him as a man who urged hard choices on others, but refused to make hard choices himself.
"This may be Alan Greenspan's last chance to save his reputation — and the country's solvency." (New York Times)
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