We'll now pause for you to pop your eyeballs back in their sockets.
You read right. Bush wants to cut programs which help Americans ("entitlements"
- as in Americans are indeed entitled to these benefits, rather than
the sneering use of the word by GOPers), and spend more on tax cuts and spying
on Americans.
We're guessing even Bush didn't hear his own state of the union address where
he talked a great game about deficit reduction. Sounds like another
statement made that night that we
shouldn't take literally.
Bush's
$2.77 Trillion Budget Plan Calls for Medicare Cuts
President Bush submitted a $2.77 trillion budget plan to Congress today that
calls for cutting Medicare and putting tight limits on most spending not related
to national security.
Mr. Bush also repeated his call for Congress to make tax cuts passed in 2001
permanent. They are scheduled to expire in 2010.
The plan calls for eliminating or making deep cuts in 141 programs for a
savings of almost $15 billion, but would provide more money for defense, homeland
security, preparations for a possible outbreak of bird flu and promotion of
the physical sciences.
The plan calls for $65 billion in reductions in projected entitlement spending
over the next five years. In what may become the most contentious proposal,
the growth of Medicare spending would be cut by $36 billion over the next
five years.
The proposal covers the 2007 fiscal year, which will begin on Oct. 1. The
total of $2.77 trillion in spending called for would be up by 2.3 percent
from projected spending of $2.71 trillion this year.
The plan did not cover the cost of military operations in Iraq or Afghanistan
or the cost of emergency aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The Bush administration
said last week that it would submit requests for supplemental spending for
$120 billion for the two wars and $18 billion more for the hurricane's aftermath.
In part because of those costs, the budget office said that the deficit for
the current fiscal year would be $423 billion, a record high, up from its
midyear estimate of $341 billion. The new budget projects the deficit to fall
to $354 billion in the 2007 fiscal year, and to $183 billion in 2010.
