Bloodless Coup

The 2006 Bush Budget

OK, so after pointing us on the road to economic oblivion through his "let's slash taxes and spend, spend, spend" approach to economics, it looks like the president is planning to put his foot ever so slightly on the brakes and cut spending if he gets reelected. A May 19th White House budget memorandum proposes the following for the 2006 budget:

The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program was funded at $4.7 billion for the fiscal year beginning in October, enough to serve the 7.9 million people expected to be eligible. But in 2006, the program would be cut by $122 million. Head Start, the early-childhood education program for the poor, would lose $177 million, or 2.5 percent of its budget, in fiscal 2006.

The $78 million funding increase that Bush has touted for a homeownership program in 2005 would be nearly reversed in 2006 with a $53 million cut. National Institutes of Health spending would be cut 2.1 percent in 2006, to $28 billion, after a $764 million increase for 2005 that brought the NIH budget to $28.6 billion.

Even homeland security -- a centerpiece of the Bush reelection campaign -- would be affected. Funding would slip in 2006 by $1 billion, to $29.6 billion, although that would still be considerably higher than the $26.6 billion devoted to that field in 2004, according to an analysis of the computer printout by House Budget Committee Democrats.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I have a Ph.D. in economics or anything, but if the country is going broke (or is long past that) is the best way to deal with that to slash funding for poor children (tomorrow's workers or prisoners) or to cut hundreds of millions from domestic security? Somehow I don't think that's going to make up for a problem that's in the trillions, but it could make life much much worse for many Americans. If it's not going to really fix the overall problem I why not just side with altruism and help feed and educate the malnourished? If he's not go to be serious and propose a fix that's appropriate to the scale of the budget problem, why look like Scrooge? I don't see much sense in that -- either politically or as a policy matter.

Posted by armand at May 27, 2004 10:53 AM | TrackBack | Posted to Politics