The 2006 Budget

Or should I say the we won't budge-it. Oh boy, you have no idea how much fun math (or subtraction particularly in this case) can be! The full website for the budget is here. To quote, let me explain. No, there is too much. Let me sum up.

Let's start with the massive misinformation. The report shows a graph of decline in percent growth of non-security discretionary spending. Yes it's true percent growth is slowing and if all the rosy predictions of this report are true, (which they aren't) then the deficit as a percentage of GDP will decline. However, this analysis leaves out more than a few important facts. First, that decline in discretionary spending is for non-security purposes. Hmmm.... I wonder why there isn't a graph for how much security spending has declined. Second, deficict as a percentage of GDP may be declining, but that doesn't mean that the deficit and the national debt are decreasing in absolute terms any time soon. When the national debt becomes a fraction of a percent of a year's GDP you can make that argument, but that ain't going to be any time soon. Third, it really shouldn't matter how much you're spending as long as you recoup that in taxes. So even if we had a higher percent growth in non-security spending under Clinton (which means less spending), we still cut the deficit by taxing to fund that spending.

Check out this highlight:

Non-security discretionary spending falls by nearly 1 percent, the tightest such restraint proposed since the Reagan Administration.

Ooooh, now there was a shining light for sound economic policy.

On the defense side of things we're looking at a $43 billion dollar increase in spending at minimum. Most of this ($35 billion) will be going to reorganize the army and increase the number of active brigades. Can I get a draft, brother?

In the economic opportunity and education (I guess they're shrinking so much as a percentage of the budget that they can be lumped together), the majority of economic opportunity comes in the form of tax cuts, while most spending on education is to support NCLB. That's right, spend more money to test teachers and kids (while we withdraw their funding to do well), and then withdraw their funding even more when they fail.

The health and compassion part sums to about $140 billion, most of which (88.8%) comes in the form of (surprise!) tax cuts. Heaven forbid you could actually provide them with equal programs. For those Republicans out there who are a little iffy on math, here's a good example. If you tax a person who makes $30k a year nothing, he still comes out a lot worse than a person who makes $100k a year and is taxed at a rate of 50%. That's $50k a year if you're still iffy on the math. So as long as insurance companies keep raising their premiums most Americans (who are those $30k earners) will be screwed. As for highlights from the highlights, we're losing 3.1 billion in tax revenue to increase individual donations to charitable organizations (churches), but we're only increasing spending on AIDS relief by $382 million.

As for science and the environment (why am I even bothering), we've got 27 billion spent on a (oh boy, could it be???) tax credit (yes!!!), while only 2 billion is spent on every other initiative.

I'm not going to go into the specifics for every department, but the NYT describes the budget 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

(except it won't really slash the budget deficit)

Basically, the military spending is a lowball because they don't know how much Iraq is really going to cost and they'd rather ask for an emergency approprations bill later. On the whole, he's slashing 150 programs and cutting spending that is coming out of education, the environment, healthcare, veterans' benefits (yay support our troops), spending more on the military, and not do anything to decrease the size of our debt. Someone needs to go at this budget with a machete, a calculator, and some of the WMD that we didn't find in Iraq.