Bush Budget Bleak
Written by Sam on February 4th, 2008
President Bush on Monday released a $3.1 trillion budget plan for fiscal 2009 that, if approved, would raise military spending to inflation-adjusted levels not seen since World War II.
The blueprint — President Bush’s last and most expensive to date — would also extend the tax cuts enacted in his first term. Increases for the military budget and big tax cuts have been hallmarks of Bush’s presidency.
The plan includes $11.4 billion to run the State Department. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to hire close to 1,100 more people, a big jump for an agency with about 8,000 Foreign Service Officers.
The budget would nearly freeze the total amount of discretionary spending on domestic programs and significantly cut the growth of Medicare.
This is unconscionable. This country is $9 trillion in debt and he goes and proposes the largest budget in American history and of course it isn’t close to being balanced. I see no reason why we need to increase military and defense spending by such an ungodly amount and produce a spending budget in excess of $3 trillion dollars. We need to close some of our bases around the world and bring those soldiers back to this country. We need to keep the cuts in discretionary spending, including the Medicare cuts in this budget as well as every other entitlement socialist program. We need to eliminate earmarks 100% and we need to start paying off this debt now!
And Bush will speak at CPAC this week? I thought that was a conservative conference.
Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.
4
PM
Sam….not that I’m going to call into question your conservatism….but it seems to be that your opinion of conservatism seems to be overly narrow. I believe that many, many conservatives applaud the stronger defense spending. I think it is unfair to call people who don’t adhere to Ron Paul style conservatism “not conservative”.
4
PM
Yeah, I’m going to have to say that I am all for expanded military spending.
5
AM
And who is going to pay for this expanded military spending when our currency becomes virtually worthless and China and Japan don’t feel like backing our debt any longer?
5
PM
I think there are many solutions to strengthing our currency and perhaps abandoaning American leadership in the world is one of them.
However, I think better steps to strengthening our dollar would be:
- scrap this stimulus garbage. that would reduce the budget by $150 billion.
- reduce corporate taxes. this would bring investment to America, increasing the strength of the dollar.
- balance the budget not by 2012 but by 2010.
As well! I think that the dollar will stengthen due to basic economic theory. I read in the Wall Street Journal a week ago how American exports rose something crazy like 13% last year (our maybe that was the annualized rate for Q4….im not really sure). In any event, this means that the demand for the dollar will rise and thus the price of the dollar. Currencies rebalance over time and I think America’s will as well.