June 11, 2003
As the budget spirals ever upward, Republicans spar over just how unfair is unfair enough...
The NY Times reports that Tom Delay and the Bushies are arguing about just how bad to screw the poor. The Prez wants to look compassionate by revising the tax bill to include millions of people who urgently need relief and who were shut out at the last minute by Republicans. Bush then signed the bill knowing that these people would get nothing.
The majority leader's defiance of the White House reflected growing frustration among conservatives about pressure from the administration to provide a benefit to millions of minimum-wage families who pay little or nothing in federal income taxes.
Delay may not really be going against the White House. As long as Bush can look like he tried, his ass will seem to be covered.
Meanwhile, the deficit is growing huge. The Republicans are right on target to strip so much funding from the government that Social Security and Medicare will have to be “reformed” to “save” them. At the same time, budgets for the military continue to rise, and education and healthcare, two items that would appear to be guaranteed by our constitution are completely forgotten about(from the Preamble of our Constitution: “ We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union,... promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,...” aren’t education and healthcare integral parts of our general welfare?).
The House Republicans released their proposal soon after the Congressional Budget Office projected that the budget deficit this year would exceed $400 billion. In dollar terms, a deficit of that level would be the biggest on record, topping the $290 billion deficit in 1992, though as a percentage of total economic output it would be smaller, at 4 percent, than the record 6 percent deficit of 1983.
Posted by Norwood at June 11, 2003 01:18 AM