Info about subscribing or unsubscribing from this list is at the bottom of this message. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Bill Thomson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > The primary way that Mr. Bush creates the budget deficit is through military expenditures, which are politically palatable to the American public. What the public does not realize, however, is the very real trade-off between military cost and virtually everything else. Today in my relatively affluent hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan, we are facing what our mayor calls a "budget crisis". Once again I repeat my mantra, "...the residents and businesses [of Ann Arbor] through income tax payments contribute over $380,000,000 annually to the cost of present and past military-related activities (over $3500 per capita), an amount 25% GREATER THAN THE ANNUAL CITY AND SCHOOL BUDGETS COMBINED. There are priorities at work here, and I would submit, a powerful political argument to be made. It cannot be the case that Ann Arbor is unique in this respect. This argument must be made, and made at the local level!? http://snipurl.com/cnb4 Pentagon Budget Up; War Cost Is Excluded ------------ http://snipurl.com/cnb1 New York Times February 8, 2005 President Offers Budget Proposal With Broad Cuts By RICHARD W. STEVENSON WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 - President Bush proposed a budget on Monday that would scale back or eliminate scores of agriculture, education, health, environmental and other domestic programs to help him meet his goal of slashing the budget deficit while providing more money for national security. Mr. Bush and his aides portrayed the plan as an effort to prune ineffective and duplicative programs while providing more support to priorities like keeping the nation safe from terrorism, keeping the economy healthy, improving high school education and building health clinics in poor areas. The budget responded to mounting calls from conservatives for Mr. Bush to take a harder line against the expansion of government, and it laid out a path for meeting his target of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 without giving an inch on his demand to make permanent the tax cuts he pushed through Congress in his first term. "It's a budget that reduces and eliminates redundancy," Mr. Bush said after meeting with his cabinet at the White House to discuss his plan for $2.57 trillion in government outlays for the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1. "We've had a history of being successful in terms of passing good, strong budgets, and so I'm very optimistic that we can do so again this year." Although it was welcomed by many Republicans on Capitol Hill as the first ambitious effort to check the growth of government since right after the Republican takeover of the House in 1994, other members of Mr. Bush's party were clearly leery of some specific proposals, especially the call for substantial reductions in aid to farmers. Democrats denounced the budget as wrongheaded in its priorities and said it masked the fiscal effects of the administration's policies. Noting that the administration's budget made no allowance beyond this year for the costs of the military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan and left out entirely the costs of Mr. Bush's proposal for overhauling Social Security, they said his proposals were not credible. "This budget takes cops off the street, hurts veterans and punishes schoolchildren while saddling future generations with record budget deficits and mountains of debt," said Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. "There's nothing fiscally responsible here." If enacted, Mr. Bush's plan would slow the growth of overall government spending to 3.6 percent next year, from 8.2 percent this year. It would result in broad, money-saving changes in programs as varied as the government insurance plan for pensions, low-income housing assistance and student loans. And it would lead to the first reduction since the Reagan administration in programs not related to the military that Congress revisits each year, like local law enforcement projects, the national park system and preschool literacy projects. Spending on that category - in budgetary language, nondefense, nondomestic-security discretionary spending - would be trimmed by almost $3 billion, or about seven-tenths of 1 percent, for the year starting Oct. 1, to $389 billion from $392 billion. It would then be frozen at $389 billion for four years, effectively imposing a further cut each year after taking account of inflation. The proposal also calls for substantial reductions in programs like Medicaid and food stamps where spending levels are largely determined by eligibility criteria. Reflecting Mr. Bush's focus on fighting terrorism at home and abroad, the Pentagon's budget would increase 4.75 percent next year, to $419 billion from $400 billion, and spending on domestic security would rise 3.2 percent, to $32.2 billion from $31.2 billion. Both the military and domestic security programs would also get steady increases through the rest of the decade. The budget included $81 billion for the request Mr. Bush is expected to send Congress next week to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 2005 fiscal year. But it included no money specifically to pay war costs in those nations next year or in following years. Administration officials said it was impossible to know how much might be needed. Even as his plan took a knife to many spending programs in the name of fiscal responsibility, it left room to make permanent the tax cuts of Mr. Bush's first term, at a cost of $53 billion in the next five years and $1.1 trillion through 2015. The costs are heavily concentrated after 2010 partly because some of the tax cuts, like the repeal of the estate tax, are being phased in gradually until then, holding down the revenue loss in the next five years. The new budget proposal also called for new tax cuts worth $23 billion in the next five years and $117 billion through 2015. After running up the national debt in the last few years, the United States is coming under pressure from other nations, as well as the financial markets, to start improving its fiscal condition, and Mr. Bush's budget sought to show progress by mapping a path to a substantially reduced budget deficit. It showed a deficit in 2009 of $233 billion, compared with $412 billion last year. But little if any progress would come in the first year or two. The budget shows the deficit climbing this year to $427 billion, including the $81 billion in new money for military operations and reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan, then declining next year to $390 billion. But the estimate for next year does not include any money for a continued American presence in Iraq and Afghanistan, assuring that the actual deficit - assuming that the administration's economic assumptions are correct - will be higher than that projection. The budget's figures for later years also understate the likely size of the deficit by not including the borrowing that, by the administration's own figures, would be needed to establish the private investment accounts that Mr. Bush has proposed for Social Security starting in 2009. Administration officials said the private accounts plan would add $23 billion to the deficit in 2009 and $56.5 billion to it in 2010, and would require higher levels of borrowing in subsequent years. The proposed spending cuts would range across the government, and include reductions that the administration has previously tried and failed to wring from Congress as well as new ones. The Justice Department would cut two programs to help localities hire more police officers, saving $635 million. The Energy Department would eliminate its oil and gas research and development programs, which this year received $83 million. The Education Department would end 48 programs, including one that will provide $441 million in grants this year to states to promote drug-free schools and another that will spend $33 million this year on reducing alcohol abuse among students. The Environmental Protection Agency would cut by $500 million its program to help poor communities build wastewater treatment plants and other water projects. The cuts would be offset to some extent by increased spending on programs Mr. Bush supports. NASA would get an added $400 million, or 2.4 percent, bringing its budget to $16.5 billion as it focuses on the administration's long-term goal of a manned mission to Mars. The budget also called for $3.2 billion to fight AIDS around the world, a rise of $382 million over this year but less than what the administration had originally signaled it would provide. The Department of Health and Human Services would get $304 million more for its program to build health clinics in poor neighborhoods, bringing the total for next year to $2 billion. After leading the nation through a military buildup and the creation of the Homeland Security Department after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush has been labeled a "big-government conservative" - admiringly by some Republicans, derisively by others who have grown frustrated by what they see as their inability to make good on their claim to be the party of limited government. This latest budget moves Mr. Bush in the direction of those conservatives most determined to scale back the federal government. And it creates a situation that many Democrats have feared: The combination of tax cuts and military spending increases has taken so much money off the table that they must choose between voting to cut programs they support or enduring Republican attacks on their fiscal responsibility. But pork-barrel spending and regional interests know few ideological boundaries, and Congress, even under Republican control, has been resistant to broad or deep budget cuts. Mr. Bush, who does not face re-election again, can more easily support them than can senators and representatives who do. Still, there are factors working in the White House's favor. The Republican leadership on Capitol Hill has tightened its control over the appropriations process by installing committee and subcommittee chairmen who are more inclined to support leaner budgets than were their predecessors. November's elections also expanded Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. "Every individual member will be disappointed about something in this budget, I am sure," said Joshua B. Bolten, the director of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. "Over all, I think they understand in the aggregate the need to restrain the federal government spending appetite, and I'm hopeful we're going to get some good support." _____________________________ Note: This message comes from the peace-justice-news e-mail mailing list of articles and commentaries about peace and social justice issues, activism, etc. If you do not regularly receive mailings from this list or have received this message as a forward from someone else and would like to be added to the list, send a blank e-mail with the subject "subscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED] or you can visit: http://lists.enabled.com/mailman/listinfo/peace-justice-news Go to that same web address to view the list's archives or to unsubscribe. E-mail accounts that become full, inactive or out of order for more than a few days will be deleted from this list. FAIR USE NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the information in this e-mail is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving it for research and educational purposes. I am making such material available in an effort to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of copyrighted material as provided for in the US Copyright Law.
