Reply #91: Bush budget lacks compassion, reality

[UpInArms]

http://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/story/5512219p-4967158c.html

President Bush’s guns-over- butter budget makes clear his priorities — and the impossibility of meeting them.

The $2.77 trillion blueprint unveiled Monday stays true to the administration’s playbook of draining social programs to fund tax cuts and the war on terror.

It proposes big increases in military and domestic security spending. The 7 percent increase in defense spending alone would represent a 45 percent hike in the Pentagon’s budget since Bush took office in 2001 and the highest level of funding for defense since the Korean War.

In exchange, other government programs would take it in the shorts. In all, Bush’s plan calls for scrapping or substantially reducing 141 federal programs that are unrelated to the nation’s security. Hit hard would be programs aimed at low-income Americans. Saved from the budget ax are the tax cuts passed in recent years. Bush continues his slavish dedication to making them permanent.

The comparison offered by a former Clinton economic adviser seems apt: Bush is like a man who leases three fully loaded Hummers and finds the expenses stretch his family’s budget to the breaking point. So he decides to buy cheaper peanut butter.

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