Reply #51: Today's Washington Post story on this

[primavera]

$2.57-Trillion Proposal Would Trim 150 Popular Programs

By Mike Allen and Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 7, 2005; 12:07 PM

President Bush today unveiled a $2.57 trillion budget that eliminates dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development, while proposing significant increases for the military and international spending.

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About 150 programs in all would be shuttered or radically cut back to help meet Bush's goal of shaving the budget deficit in half by 2009. One out of every three of the targeted programs concerns education. Medicaid funding would be reduced significantly and even major military weapons programs would be scrapped to make more resources available for the war in Iraq.

<snip>

"We are being tight," Vice President Cheney said yesterday. "This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here." But Cheney defended the cuts as measured. "I think you'll find, once people sit down and have a chance to look at the budget, that it is a fair, reasonable, responsible, serious piece of effort," he said on "Fox News Sunday." "It's not something we've done with a meat ax, nor are we suddenly turning our back on the most needy people in our society."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A4563-2005Feb7.html

OMG, for once I agree with something Dick Cheney said! He's absolutely right, they're not "suddenly turning their backs on the most needy people in our society," they've been doing that for four years now!