Posted on 01/31/2004 6:43:25 PM PST by demlosers
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - President Bush vowed on Saturday to hold the line on spending as he sought to reassure members of his own party who are upset at record budget deficits.
The president told a gathering of congressional Republicans that the task of restraining spending would be a tough one in an election year when politicians are loath to cut popular programs.
"This is going to be a challenging year for making sure we spend the people's money wisely," he said.
But Bush said he wanted to send a "clear signal" to the public and to financial markets that the administration was committed to belt-tightening.
The strategy session of Republicans came just two days before Bush was set to unveil his fiscal 2005 budget. It is expected to project a record $521 billion deficit.
The budget will call for holding spending growth outside of defense and homeland security to 0.5 percent.
But some conservative Republicans worry that safeguarding security-related expenditures from the budget cap will give the White House wide latitude to propose new spending since security issues might be defined broadly within the budget.
New costs such as a White House proposal for manned expeditions to the moon and Mars have set fiscal conservatives on edge.
Further stoking concerns was an acknowledgment this week by the White House that Bush's Medicare prescription drug program would cost tens of billions more than expected.
Bush's budget will show a $530 billion cost over 10 years for the addition of a prescription drug benefit for the Medicare health program for senior citizens. That is 33 percent more than was anticipated when the Medicare overhaul was approved less than two months ago.
Bush seemed to win some goodwill with the members of his party by lingering for an hour in a private session to take questions -- longer than he has in previous years. The president was asked about both Medicare and the budget deficits.
On Medicare, Bush replied he had no regrets about pushing for the prescription drug benefit despite its price tag and said he still thought he could accomplish his goal of cutting the budget deficit in half in five years, according to a U.S. official who was there.
Another participant said that on that matter of the budget deficit, "there's a sense that we need to act."
"Some of the frustration (over the deficit) is directed at the president and some it is directed at ourselves," said the participant, who is a Republican congressional aide.
Despite griping that has been going on behind the scenes about budgetary issues, Republicans girded for the election battle with solidarity chants of "Four more years" after Bush finished his speech.
Bush has come under repeated attacks over the deficit from Democrats trying to unseat him. They blame his tax cuts for the red ink. The president faces a re-election vote in November.
Democrats said on Saturday that Bush, in his efforts to rein in deficits, was targeting programs that help the most vulnerable U.S. citizens.
"Tax cuts that pile on to the largest deficit in our history will not help those folks find jobs," Rep. Brad Miller of North Carolina said in the Democratic response to the president's Saturday radio address. "Deficits drag the economy down, increase interest rates, and leave a staggering debt for our children to pay."
Bush in his own radio address earlier urged Congress to bring back now-expired rules that forbid increases in spending unless they are paid for elsewhere within the budget.
The WMD "scandal" doesn't interest me, although it certainly interests the media. This one does.
The much delayed omnibus appropriations bill for 2004, scheduled for a vote in the Senate this afternoon, looks set to cap the first term of the most profligate Administration since the 1960s.
The bottom line is truly shocking. Passage of the omnibus bill would raise total discretionary spending to more than $900 billion in 2004. By contrast, the eight Clinton-era budgets produced discretionary spending growth from $541 billion 1994 to $649 billion in 2001. Nor can recent increases be blamed on the war. At 18.6%, the increase in non-defense discretionary spending under the 107th Congress (2002-2003) is far and away the biggest in decades.
The much delayed omnibus appropriations bill for 2004, scheduled for a vote in the Senate this afternoon, looks set to cap the first term of the most profligate Administration since the 1960s.
The bottom line is truly shocking. Passage of the omnibus bill would raise total discretionary spending to more than $900 billion in 2004. By contrast, the eight Clinton-era budgets produced discretionary spending growth from $541 billion 1994 to $649 billion in 2001. Nor can recent increases be blamed on the war. At 18.6%, the increase in non-defense discretionary spending under the 107th Congress (2002-2003) is far and away the biggest in decades.
http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200401211053.asp
A few quick facts. George W. Bush has:
increased federal spending on education by 60.8 percent;
increased federal spending on labor by 56 percent;
increased federal spending on the interior by 23.4 percent;
increased federal spending on defense by 27.6 percent.
And of course he has:
created a massive department of homeland security;
signed a campaign-finance bill he pretty much said he thought was unconstitutional (thereby violating his oath to uphold, protect, and defend the constitution);
signed the farm bill, which was a non-kosher piñata filled with enough pork to bend space and time;
pushed through a Medicare plan which starts with a price tag of $400 billion but will — according to every expert who studies the issue — go up a gazillion-bajillion dollars over the next decade;
torched Republican — and American — credibility on trade, in both agriculture and steel;
got more people working for the federal government since the end of the Cold War;
not vetoed a single spending — or any other bill, and he has no intention of eliminating a single department;
sold out like a fire sale at Filene's on Title IX, a subject I know a little about because my wife is the foremost expert in the universe on it;
pushed to send more Americans to Mars while inviting a lot more illegal immigrants to hang out here in America.
Those two make up 40% of the spending increases. The other 60% is waste.
All the while, the stock market is charging and homestarts are at an all time high. Tech stocks rise form the dead, as well.
Yeah, all those tech stocks with a 100 P/E have a real bright future. [/sarcasm]
I propose we make even more of a racket.
The MS IPO was 20 years ago. By your own admission that investment choice was luck. Care to "wow" me with any other tech investments from two decades ago and why that means anything in today's tech market?
Even those "surpluses" were a mirage. If we had actually had surpluses, then the national debt would have gone down. It didn't.
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