Posted on 5-2-2003
Bush
Budget In The Red
By Elisabeth Bumiller, NYT 3 Feb03
President G W Bush sent Congress a $2.23 trillion budget today
— with
record deficits — that would speed up billions of dollars in
income tax
cuts, provide huge increases for the Pentagon and offer a modest
jump in
spending for NASA.
Mr. Bush's budget forecasts a deficit of $304 billion in the
current fiscal
year, and projects a deficit of $307 billion for the 2004 fiscal
year,
which begins Oct. 1. Over the next five years the total projected
deficit
would be more than $1 trillion, a potentially problematic number
for Mr.
Bush, who as a presidential candidate vowed that he could both
cut taxes
and eliminate the national debt. In his budget message to Congress,
the
president said his budget reflected his most urgent national
priorities:
"Winning the war against terrorism, securing the homeland and
generating
long-term economic growth."
The budget included no projection of the cost of any war with
Iraq, which
administration officials have said could be as low as $50 billion
and as
high as $200 billion. If there is a conflict, officials said,
Mr. Bush
would ask Congress for the money as an emergency supplement.
The budget calls for cuts in a wide range of domestic spending,
including
trims in Justice Department programs on juvenile delinquency
and tribal
courts and a halt in financing for the hiring of police officers.
Money for
a public housing program and aid to rural schools also would
be cut. Over
time, government-financed child care and children's health insurance
would
be reduced.
Democrats immediately attacked the White House for the deficits
and what
they called the most fiscally irresponsible budget in decades.
"The
president's budget is worse than a bad movie that no one wants
to see
twice," Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Senate Democratic
leader,
said in a statement distributed by his office. "It's a budget-busting
epic
disaster."
Administration officials just as quickly dismissed such concerns.
"A
balanced budget is a high priority for this administration,"
said Mitchell
E. Daniels Jr., the White House budget director, in a briefing
for
reporters today. "It is not the top or the only priority."
The president's top priority, Mr. Daniels said, was protecting
the country
from terrorist attack. As a reflection of that, he said, the
administration
was requesting $41 billion for domestic security and $380 billion
for
defense, an increase of 4.2 percent beyond what was already
the biggest
military buildup since the administration of Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Bush, in his budget message to Congress, attributed the
deficits to the
costs of the campaign against terrorism, calling it "a war we
did not
choose" and a recession that started in early 2001. "My administration
firmly believes in controlling the deficit and reducing it as
the economy
strengthens and our national security interests are met," he
said.
Mr. Daniels asserted that the $300 billion deficit, representing
2.7
percent of the nation's gross domestic product, was not large
enough in
percentage terms to cause trouble or to raise interest rates
— an assertion
that Democrats and some budget analysts called outrageous. "Mitch
Daniels
has proved once again that he is first and foremost a political
operative
and not a budget director," said Robert Greenstein, the executive
director
of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal research
group. "I
can think of few budget directors in recent history who would
have made
such astounding statements."
Mr. Greenstein said that the current deficits, while relatively
small, were
a threat to the near future, when a tidal wave of retiring baby
boomers
will tax the ailing Medicare and Social Security systems.
Mr. Bush's budget, a five-inch stack of five paperback volumes
weighing
more than 13 pounds, also details his proposals for increases
in education
and AIDS programs. It is filled with cheerful pictures of children
lining
up for school lunches and of a new kindergarten in Afghanistan
supported by
the Agency for International Development, prompting Representative
Charles
B. Rangel of New York, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and
Means
Committee, to brand it a press release. "What Congress received
today is
pure P.R. with color pictures of little children and brave soldiers
designed to distract the American public from the truth," Mr.
Rangel said.
The truth, Mr. Rangel said, was that the president's proposed
$670 billion
economic package, which proposes the elimination of the tax
individuals pay
on stock dividends as well as the acceleration of planned income
tax cuts,
was running up the debt for a future generation to pay.
Mr. Bush's budget sets aside $400 billion over the next 10 years
to
overhaul Medicare, and offers a photograph of the president
framed by a
large backdrop of a "Strengthening Medicare" sign from a recent
event. But
the budget offers no significant new details on how Mr. Bush
will change
the program. It also does not answer the fundamental question,
which
administration officials have so far declined to answer, of
whether the
elderly will have to leave their fee-for-service Medicare plans
for health
maintenance organizations to get insurance coverage for prescription
drugs.
The NASA budget, normally little noticed by people outside of
aeronautics,
drew intense attention today. The president proposed that NASA
financing
should grow by nearly $500 million to $15.5 billion, an increase
that White
House officials said was in place before the space shuttle Columbia
ripped
apart on Saturday. Financing for the space shuttle program,
which included
four orbiters until the loss of Columbia, would increase to
$3.9 billion
from $3.2 billion.
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