Let the Budget Battle Begin!

In an attempt at fiscal austerity, a term almost laughable in regards to the Bush Administration and the record deficit we have accrued under their supervision, the Bush Administration proposes the reexamination of bloated governmental programs; a noble aspiration. At face value, the 2.57 trillion dollar budget for 2006 proposed by the Bush administration seems to be a stepping stone towards appreciable deficit reduction. However, even basic consideration belies the budget’s seemingly financially prudent exterior.

To begin, the budget proposes to cut over 150 governmental programs, roughly 48 of which are, ironically, education based; programs touted as achievements by Mr. Bush himself during his reelection. The politically vulnerable programs benefiting the middle and lower class (like health care, community development, child care, and food stamps) are proposed to endure more than half the budget slashing when they account for a mere ten percent of the spending increases over the first Bush term.

Huge sums of money, thank god, are still allocated to homeland security, the pentagon, and insanely high agriculture subsidies (up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year given to farmers!) while education and the environment is put on the back burner. To bad, it’s not the American people who will be paying for the bloated pentagon bureaucracy; instead, the ‘temporary’ tax cuts will become permanent!

Not only does the budget include disproportionate, politically sheepish, program cuts, but it completely excludes the tens of billions needed to implement a proposed privatization of social security program and even the Iraq war, which is costing almost five billion a week right now! Though politically tactful, the new budget will do little to help our current financial crisis.