Is This The Year?

by DemFromCT

Well, this time I'm not referring to Nov 2006... there's plenty of time to debate elections. I'm talkin' about the Bush Doctrine... make promises today, send the bill to our kids. Well, with this new budget just maybe the bloom is off the rose.

The president's budget shows the limits of his promise that Americans do not have to choose tax cuts or social programs.

Do we really think the mess in Iraq will be over by the time Bush leaves office (especially if he leaves early)? And as far as the budget goes

Now into his sixth year in the White House, Mr. Bush offered a budget on Monday that showed more clearly than ever the inexorable limits of that political promise.

Mr. Bush is asking Congress, first and foremost, to make his tax cuts permanent and to increase spending on national security, while looking for savings in popular domestic programs like Medicare and vocational education. The tradeoffs, to his critics, are achingly clear, and unfair.

All war all the time? Nothing left for your kids (and you when you age) when it comes to education and social services? The reason for all those years that Americans kept these people from power is staring us in the face.

The lie that cutting taxes will fix what ails us is better understood at the local than the national level. Well, in my town, we routinely reject the first budget just out of habit. There's always something we don't need in it, right? Then we get serious and raise taxes if necessary for schools, roads and the elderly. And believe me, New Englanders are as frugal as anyone else. But we don't lie about what we're doing, and we hold our elected officials responsible.

It's really a better way. And electing people who, with all its flaws, can make government work better (and believe it's possible) is really a smart thing to do. Is this the year it becomes clear that's exactly what we're missing?

Comments

[dj moonbat]

Is this the year? No, probably not. We'll get back mindshare in a lot of blue/purplish states and districts this time around (hopefully before November), but For America to come back from the brink, the Red Folks also need to see just how badly fucked they've become. For that to happen, they will need to be well-n-truly fucked, so I figure another 4 years at least before the Long National Republican Nightmare is over.

[Steve]

Bush talked about two things in the SOTU: (1) making his tax cuts permanent and (2) cutting the deficit in half by 2009. It is impossible to do both of these things simultaneously.

[shep]

Repeat after me:

Republicans don't believe in government (they've said so).

Again.

[Mimikatz]

It is hard to grasp just how much the lower 80% of the population has been losing ground over the last ten years. The Bush tax cuts are a big part of this. The dividend and capital gains rate cuts go disproportionately not just to the top, but to the tippy top--a full 45% of the benefits go to the top .3% of households, those with a taxable income of over $1 million. Surely this raises the question, "how much is enough?" And the bill for the so-called "investor" tax cuts is $20 billion over 5 years.

Many have remarked that where we really show who we are as a people is in the budget bills--who we tax and who we reward. This latest Bush disaster is one more example of his distorted sense of priorities.

What to do? Find out more of the facts here and here. A good place to start is the 13 GOP representatives who voted against the last budget reconciliation bill here and the 31 Dem House members who voted to repeal the estate tax last year, also available on Atrios' site. These folks really need to feel the heat.

[Mimikatz]

Matt Yglesias is probably right--just crushing the so-called "GOP moderates" is probably the way to go, rather than expectring them to do the right thing. Not that I am a "wait until November" sort of person. Raising impeachment and replacing the current Congress with something better are not mutually exclusive.

[Mimikatz]

Per Froomkin, no one in the press seems willing to take this budget seriously. That is at least some progress.