I can't believe there wasn't a thread on this already. I'd like to get everybody's opinions on this one.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/02/05/ ... index.html
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush sent a $2.9 trillion spending plan to a Democratic-controlled Congress on Monday, proposing a big increase in military spending.

While the budget includes billions more to fight the war in Iraq, the rest of government would be squeezed to meet Bush's goal of eliminating the deficit in five years.

Bush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years.

He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- over the next five years.

Release of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.

"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-South Carolina, said, "I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either."

Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, agreed with the bleak assessment of Bush's prospects of getting Congress to approve his budget as proposed.

"Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs," Gregg said, contending there is a wide gulf between the two parties. "The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending," Gregg said.

The president insisted that he had made the right choices to keep the nation secure from terrorist threats and the economy growing.

"I strongly believe Congress needs to listen to a budget which says no tax increase and a budget, because of fiscal discipline, that can be balanced in five years," Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.

Just as Iraq has come to dominate Bush's presidency, military spending was a major element in the president's new spending request.

Bush was seeking a Pentagon budget of $624.6 billion for 2008, more than one-fifth of the total budget, up from $600.3 billion in 2007.

For the first time, the Pentagon included details for the upcoming budget year on how much the Iraq war would cost -- an estimated $141.7 billion for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the cost of repairing and replacing equipment lost in combat. But White House spokesman Tony Fratto cautioned that the 2008 projection was likely to change. "We're not saying the number for '08 is the final number," Fratto said. "We don't know that right now."

Bush projected a deficit in the current year of $244 billion, just slightly lower than last year's $248 billion imbalance. For 2008, the budget year that begins next October 1, Bush sees another slight decline in the deficit to $239 billion with further steady improvement over the next three years until the budget records a surplus of $61 billion in 2012, three years after Bush has left office.

Democrats, however, challenged those projections, contending that Bush only achieves a surplus by leaving out the billions of dollars Congress is expected to spend to keep the alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. His budget includes an AMT fix only for 2008.

Bush projects government spending in 2008 of $2.90 trillion, a 4.9 percent increase from the $2.78 trillion in outlays the administration is projecting for this year. However, the administration notes that the 2007 total is only an estimate, given that Congress is still working to complete a massive omnibus spending bill to cover most agencies for the rest of this fiscal year.





Ohhh baby, if Bush can pull through with his deficit elimination proposal, y'all better worship the ground he walks on. What I find most interesting is nearly the same amount spent on our military as healthcare. Thoughts?

Worship.....hahahah


It's decent, but worship, that's a bit much.

Figurative speech. You have to admit that eliminating the deficit would be a landmark in this country's history.

Bill Clinton did that and all that you guys could discuss was if he fucked or not that Monica girl.

So the media here tells me he's slashing funding from health and pumping it into the military. Would that be an accurate assessment?

I don't see why "Medicare" and "Health" are separate items. Together they make up much more than defense spending, and if you include Social Security they make up nearly half the budget.

I can...sort of. The hospital I worked at before coming over here recieved funding from state and national governments. They recieved grants for pieces of specialized equipment, drugs, operating expenses, so on and so forth. That's not really Medicaire.

I'd be curious to know how that bunch of money was really being spent though.

*fixed

Wow, incredible, eliminate the deficit, I'm pretty sure the deficit was already eliminated until Bush took office.

Any dipshit can eliminate the deficit, I can fucking do it, slice some %s off a couple places, bam, no more deficit. That doesn't mean I am doing anything right though.

Bush creates a ridiculous amount of debt, fucks everything up, and then, IF, after he leaves office, the whole thing gets cleared up (which is stupidly optimistic), we should worship the ground he walks on.

Hyperbole, I understand. But to even insinuate that we should be grateful is one of the the dumbest things I think I've read on this forum in a long time, and considering some of the mongoloids we have posting here, that says a lot. Seriously, critically, dangerously fucking retarded.

Whatever. On a semi-related tangent, I remember reading that the estimate from a few years ago entailed the Western world donating somewhere between $54 and 62 billion a year to the third world to basically halve the debt and rectify the dire situation in lesser developed countries. There's hesitance and reluctance there, yet the United States alone being close to 50% of the world's military spending is totally cool. Fuck the world, amirite?

while I'm glad the administration finally did this, it's about fucking time, but about $500 billion too late. Even McCain is pissed:


Are you serious? I can't believe you're this excited about the President's projection that the budget might turn into a surplus four years after he's left office!

You know what's left out of Bush's rosy budget picture? The national debt, which has skyrocketed on Bush's watch. In 2001, the federal debt was at $5.8 trillion, and now it's at $8.7 trillion. In 2012, the debt is projected to be at $10.9 trillion. Want to know your share of the debt? Click here.

Why is this a threat to the nation's economy? Ask Ben Bernanke:


Essentially, the federal government still is doing nothing to address the nation's long-term budget issues. We're running up the debt while the retirement of the baby boomers is on the horizon, which is the worst possible time.

It's clear that taxes must be increased AND spending must be cut, otherwise I think our country is digging itself an inescapable grave. I hope Bush isn't still advocating for an extension of his tax cuts, because our country cannot afford them:


So the big questions are: Do Democrats have the balls to cut back on spending on the enormous entitlement programs? And will Republicans finally accept the fact that taxes must be increased as the retirement of the baby boomers hovers over our heads?

Post of the Week. Seriously, that shit made me laugh out loud.

Anyway, the rest of this thread has scared me, especially the last post. I'm going to start studying even harder for chemistry because man I don't want to end up on the shitty end of a fiscal crisis when the baby boomers retire in the next x years.