Fiscal Conservatives

I say this gets an up-or-down vote without earmarks and freedom to choose:

President Bush on Monday sent Congress a $3.11 trillion budget request that sees a worsening deficit over the next two years but projects a balanced federal budget by 2012.

The budget request seeks a 6% rise in total government spending for fiscal 2009, which begins Oct. 1. The deficit would total $407 billion.

The White House expects the government to end the current fiscal year with a deficit of $410 billion. This is a sharp increase from a deficit of $162 billion last year.

Nothing like going out in style.

Tax-and-Spend

Will ruin us:

The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion - roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Democrats on Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Is it too much to ask for our President should be able to add and subtract?

I Can Hardly Wait

The White House Wednesday is expected to project a U.S. budget deficit for this year of just over $200 billion, down from prior estimates because of strong tax receipts, Republican sources said.

A deficit for fiscal 2007 in that range would mark a decline from the $248 billion gap recorded last year. The fresh estimate will be unveiled at 1 p.m. ET in the administration's "midsession review" of the budget.

Because Republicans are good at managing your money. I truly no longer believe anything this administration says. If there is a decline, it is because Bush has cut essential spending on education and healthcare. He is also probably using Enron-style accounting and excluding several new things that would otherwise increase the deficit. Like the Iraq War, which is funded off the books through special appropriations bills.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I do not want to do any more statistical debunking this week, but this dog don't hunt:

The U.S. federal government deficit has shrunk by about a third so far in fiscal 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated late Wednesday.

Through the first eight months of the fiscal year (through May), the deficit probably
totaled about $152 billion, down from $227 billion at this time last year.

For all of 2007, the CBO still predicts a budget shortfall of between $150 billion and $200 billion. The deficit figures would be much larger if the expected $186 billion surplus from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were excluded.

Emphasis mine. The notion that the budget is representative of the U.S. government's costs and revenuesneeds to be debunked. The budget is officially what is on the books and has been budgeted for ahead of time - not the actual inflows and, more importantly, outflows. In particular, there is one noteworthy little item called the Iraq War that has not been on the books from the start, because it has been funded with emergency supplemental bills. The cost of the war so far is somewhere around $375-400 billion, $60 billion of which has been approved to be spent on Iraq this year. If you add that on to our deficit figure, we get right back to where we were last year.

Nothing like waging a war off the books so you can dupe your shareholders/constituents into thinking you ar much more financially viable than you actually are. That smacks of Enron-style accounting to me.