Reply #19: The Bush budget is a trillion little pieces of fantasy

[UpInArms]

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/steffy/3643694.html

WE will be out of Iraq and, for that matter, Afghanistan, by the end of the next fiscal year. No troops, no economic support of any kind.

The alternative minimum tax, that secret tax system ensnaring more and more middle-class families, will vanish without costing the government a dime in lost revenue.

The tax cuts that have saved some of the wealthiest among us hundreds of dollars a year will continue indefinitely. This, too, will cost the government nothing.

That spiffy alternative energy technology that President Bush said in his State of the Union speech last week will help end our oil addiction? It can be funded on a shoestring.

Those are just a few of the twisted fantasies you have to embrace if you want to follow the president down the rabbit hole of his latest budget proposal.

We have been here before.

It's the parallel universe in which difficult choices are put off in favor of mind-bending assumptions. When those assumptions don't come true, the White House will embrace its familiar retreat: Blame Congress.

The cost of our national debt, according to the little counter that sits on my desk, now tops $8.19 trillion. By the president's own projection, the budget deficit will set a record of $423 billion this fiscal year.

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