Posted on 11/24/2004 5:05:12 AM PST by OESY
...When the president released his Fiscal 2005 Budget in February calling for a disciplined budget, some politicians and pundits dismissed it as "dead on arrival." They warned that its spending limits could not be met or would require devastating reductions in key priorities. They were wrong.
To the credit of key leaders, the Congress stayed within budget limits and met key priorities. While the appropriations bills are not perfect, they honor the goals President Bush set last February: overall discretionary spending in Fiscal 2005 will rise only 4%, the same as the average increase in American family income. The budget also provides substantial increases in funding for essential defense and homeland security needs.
Just as the president proposed, discretionary spending for non-security programs will rise only about 1%, which is half the rate of inflation and the lowest rate of growth since the Republicans first took control of Congress in the mid-1990s.
This is the fourth consecutive year that growth in such spending has declined, down from 15% growth in the last budget year of the previous Administration. And even within this year's restrained budget, the Congress managed to fund important priorities....
As we make progress toward reducing the deficit in the short-term, we must also address the long-term fiscal danger posed by our entitlement programs. Social Security alone faces a $10 trillion unfunded obligation. As currently structured, the program will be unable to provide promised retirement benefits to young Americans entering the workforce today. We know that the system needs to be fixed. The president has called for reforms that would keep Social Security's promises to today's retirees and near-retirees, while giving younger workers a chance to save in personal accounts for their own retirement. While we prepare for the retirement of the baby-boomers, such reforms will be essential....
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Lots of people think Bush is a pure big spender...I'm not one of them. These facts are pretty impressive, imho.
"These facts are pretty impressive, imho."
The latest figures are adequate only if you choose to ignore the utterly unbridled spending of the past four years.
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