Today, after much posturing and theorizing, the 2006 Federal Budget has been released. You can get your very own copy! Isn’t the internet great?
Now, don’t get to thinking this budget is set in stone. It’s as malleable as a Word document at this point. The Congress still has to wrangle over each line item, alternately decrying what is there and demanding what is not there. The President’s proposal is described as “a tough sell.” Although the 2006 fiscal year starts on October 1, recent history tells us not to expect the final version to pass until next January. It must really be nice to be able to let financial decisions slide for three months; it’s certainly not anything most people can get away with.
Now, the numbers we are talking about are big, big numbers, and most people kind of fuzz over numbers than end in “illion,” so go ahead and start thinking of “a billion” as “a thousand million.” “A trillion” becomes “a million million.” This should help add perspective as you read information about this budget. The overall budget is two and a half million million dollars. That is nevertheless several hundred thousand million less than expected tax revenues.
This budget includes a facade of fiscal conservatism. President Bush’s stated goal is to reduce the budget deficit by half as compared to GDP, a sufficiently vague figure that allows economists plenty of room to argue. Oh, and that figure, estimated at a 2009 deficit of $230 thousand million, “do not take into account some big-ticket items: the military costs incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, the price of making Bush’s first term tax cuts permanent, or the transition costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security.” That’s like writing your household budget without accounting for electricity and the credit card bills.
Just about everything but military spending is supposed to be cut if not eliminated. Farm subsidies top the list, a controversial measure long demanded by the international community, but one must wonder if this is being done in a manner which helps family farms, or whether this is another favor to agribusiness. More cuts will occur in the Department of Education, despite the fact that states and school districts are already screaming about unfunded federal mandates and the expenses associated with No Child Left Behind. Other Big Big Cuts include public health and housing for the poor. Just think how much money this nation can save by making sure there are plenty of chronically ill homeless people. Why, that just makes me want to read some Dickens novels!
Oh but wait, America’s big cities aren’t going to be happy with that arrangement. We both know that the States and cities will not have much choice but to suck up expenses the Feds won’t pay for. Governors on both sides of the political spectrum are not happy. Most of them must balance their budgets every year by law, most of them have cut everything they can, and some of them have raised taxes as high as they dare. Even radical conservatives like The Heritage Foundation say it’s time for the Feds to be honest about their budgetary obligations.
And you know what we haven’t even talked about yet? The cost of President Bush’s Social Security plans. Over the weekend, Cyborg Vice President Dick Cheney admitted that the Bush plan would cost $754 thousand million over the next 10 years, and unknown millions of millions after that. He claims this is still better than the alternatives. Or is it? The money Mr. Cheney is talking about appears to be more than the cost to shore up the current Social Security System. It would be more intellectually honest to say they would like to shut down the Social Security Administration altogether. Supply Siders would have to grudgingly accept this as a good thing because it would have the net effect of a 12% tax cut to most Americans and the businesses that pay them. Fiscal conservatives would have to grudgingly accept this as a good thing because it would allow the government to retire $1.6 million million in federal debt. Many Baby Boomers and younger Americans would grudgingly accept it because it’s at least honest, and many of them never expected to see a dime anyway.
Of course it would really suck for the millions of Americans who need that money to pay the rent. You remember, the ones for whom the Safety Net was built in the first place?