bush's budget f'ks everyone except his pals - as usual!

From AOL News :

Bush Sends Congress $2.57 Trillion Budget
Plan Seeks to Slash Spending in Many Popular Programs

WASHINGTON (Feb. 7) - President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget plan Monday that seeks deep spending cuts across a wide swath of government from reducing subsidies paid to the nation's farmers, cutting health care payments for poor people and veterans and trimming spending on the environment and education.

The budget - the most austere of Bush's presidency - would eliminate or vastly scale back 150 government programs. It will spark months of contentious debate in Congress, where lawmakers will fight to protect their favored programs.

The spending document projects that the deficit will hit a record $427 billion this year, the third straight year that the red ink in dollar terms has set a record. Bush projects that the deficit will fall to $390 billion in 2006 and gradually decline to $233 billion in 2009 and $207 billion in 2010.

Bush's 2006 spending plan, for the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, counts on a healthy economy to boost revenues by 6.1 percent to $2.18 trillion. Spending, meanwhile, would grow by 3.5 percent to $2.57 trillion.

However, outside defense, homeland security and the government's huge mandatory programs such as Social Security, Bush proposes cutting spending for the rest of government by 0.5 percent, the first such proposed cut since the Reagan administration battled with its own soaring deficits.

Of 23 major government agencies, 12 would see their budget authority reduced next year, including cuts of 9.6 percent at Agriculture and 5.6 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.

In his budget message to Congress, Bush said, "In order to sustain our economic expansion, we must continue pro-growth policies and enforce even greater spending restraint across the federal government."

But Democrats complained that Bush was resorting to draconian cuts that would hurt the needy in order to protect his first term tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy.

"This budget is part of the Republican plan to cut Social Security benefits while handing out lavish tax breaks for multimillionaires," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Its cuts in veterans programs, health care and education reflect the wrong priorities and its huge deficits are fiscally irresponsible."

Bush's budget does not reflect the costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security by allowing younger workers to set up private investment accounts. It also does not include any new spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, The administration has said it will seek in coming weeks an additional $80 billion for the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for this year.

Critics also contend that the five-year deficit projections also mask the costs of some Bush initiatives such as making his first-term tax cuts permanent, the bulk of which do not show up until after 2010. The budget puts the 10-year cost of making the president's tax cut proposals permanent at $1.29 trillion.

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Overall, the administration projected saving $8.2 billion in agriculture programs over the next decade including trimming food stamp payments to the poor by $1.1 billion.

Other programs set for cuts include the Army Corps of Engineers, whose dam and other waterway projects are extremely popular in Congress; the Energy Department; several health programs under the Health and Human Services Department and federal subsidies for the Amtrak passenger railroad.

About one-third of the programs being targeted for elimination are in the Education Department, including federal grant programs for local schools in such areas as vocational education, anti-drug efforts and Even Start, a $225 million literacy program.

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Many of the spending cuts in the budget are repeats of efforts the administration has proposed and Congress has rejected previously.

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It honestly seems like the "legacy" he wants to leave is that of being the worst president ever and the president that f'k'd over the most people! What other logic is there to the insane things that he is trying to do?!
He wants to cut the budgets to all of the programs that will help people in order to reduce the deficit that he has caused. Even with his budget, the reduction of the deficit is dependent on a growing economy, something that is extremely iffy these days!
Funny that the last major deficit was during another republican's stay in office - someone that bush wants to emulate!
Even more interesting is the fact that his budget does not include the trillions that it would cost for his plan to destroy Social Security and to continue his tax cuts and the billions for his wars.
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Check out this article at Daily Kos for still another way that bush and his budget will screw our troops! Disgusting!