Molly Ivins: On Bush's budget

[Dudley_DUright]

I feel snakebite about praising any proposal by George W. Bush. Every time I write a column saying, "Look, he's done something good!" he does something else that makes it either not so good or just plain bad. He welched on his deal with Ted Kennedy in the Lots of Children Left Behind Act, now underfunded by $12 billion. And nobody has ever seen that $15 billion he promised to fight AIDS in Africa.

The hideous Medicare prescription drug benefit, perhaps the most obscenely deformed legislation I've ever seen written, in addition to being a mother lode for the drug companies now turns out not to cost the promised $400 billion over 10 years but a whopping $1.2 trillion. (For those of you who are fans of the Department of Great Big Numbers, the administration is now estimating there will be "offsets" to the prescription drug fiasco that will reduce the $1.2 trillion to a mere $720 billion. Remember when they tried to fire that whistleblower who said it would cost at least $530 billion? And don't count on those offsets. These folks have remarkable imaginations -- they're counting as certain revenue $1 billion from oil drilling in ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge), something Congress has rejected for the last four years.)

All that said, I did find a good idea in Bush's budget -- putting a lower cap on farm subsidies. Three-fourths of federal crop subsidies go to the wealthiest 10 percent of agriculture businesses. This is not a red state-blue state issue. Two-thirds of American farms -- those run by families and small operators -- do not qualify for subsidies at all. For years, agribusiness has successfully hidden behind the sacred shield of "the family farmer," who is still getting screwed. It's a monumental rip-off, made worse by a loophole that has allowed some huge agribusiness firms to collect millions of dollars a year by disguising themselves as several corporations. Farm conservation programs make much more sense and do benefit family farmers.

And that said, what a sham, what a rotten, phony, fake document this 2006 budget is.

more...

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18527

[acmavm]

1. Of course this is a class warfare budget, anyone who thinks otherwise

has some kind of reasoning defect. And nothing any different could be expected from pResident Unelected, the man who stole Texans and Harken investors blind, all while lining his own pockets.

But the fake patriots and 'representatives' of the people need to heed Molly's warning in the last paragraph. These guys are nothing if not predictable master sneaks and criminals and they've got little tidbits hidden in there that would totally change the way the federal budget is handled, taking the decision making, appropriations, and the rule that the budget has to be presented every year, AWAY from Congress and handing it all to the criminals who already have their fingers in our pockets and bank accounts and our paychecks.