The Blue State

Democrats expected to successfully override a Bush veto

It's not Iraq.  It's not health care.  It's a water bill.  But still, it shows that the Democrats are indeed capable of overriding a presidential veto:

The House is expected to vote overwhelmingly Tuesday to overridePresident Bush’s veto of legislation funding $23 billion worth of waterprojects, diminishing Bush’s authority as he heads into a spendingshowdown with Democrats over 12 unfinished appropriations bills, saygovernment scholars.

A House GOP aide predicted a “99.99percent” chance that the House would vote to override Bush, an outcomemade likely by the 381 votes that the Water Resources Development Act(WRDA) received before reaching the president’s desk.

Impressive.  Now go full speed ahead on the appropriations bills so we can fund the government in 2008.  Any government shutdown would be fodder for the Republicans in 2008.

 

Amid secrecy, some disclosure

For the first time since the formation of the CIA, intelligence funding is being disclosed to the public:

The Bush administration said it had spent $43.5 billion on spying infiscal 2007, as it bowed on Tuesday to a law ordering disclosure of afigure the government has kept secret for most of the past 60 years.   

"Disclosure of the amount of the budget is a good first step towardaccountability," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of AmericanScientists, which has campaigned for publication of the annualintelligence budget.

The figure, which is roughly equal to the entire economy of Croatia orQatar, dwarfs the estimated intelligence budgets of any other countryincluding the closest U.S. ally, Britain, which spends about 10 percentof the amount, he said.

Now that the lid is off on intelligence funding, the debate will begin on whether spending nearly $50 billion per year is worth it.

It gets spent either way -- but on what?

A few weeks ago President Bush vetoed the children's health care bill, citing cost as one of the main issues.  He also lashed out at Congress for exceeding his spending limit for the overall 2008 budget.  Yet, Bush submitted a Pentagon budget that called for a significant increase in funds compared to last year.

As Congressman Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) said on Wednesday, President Bush is trying to have it both ways.  He complains about spending, yet turns around and increases it on other things, while still claiming to be a fiscal conservative:

“Republicans say there’s excessive spending. We agree. Two-hundredbillion [dollars] for Iraq is excessive,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel(Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus.

Bush has repeatedly threatened to veto Democratic spending bills that come in higher than the budget numbers he has set.

That is $800 million each day on the war.

The debate is about what you spend your money on, not whether you spend anything -- because both sides are doing it.  The Democrats just think that investing in our children's health is much more cost-efficient and better in the long run than investing in military contractors and bombs that don't even help our foreign policy.

Richardson: Redirect Pentagon funds towards domestic issues

With the backdrop of the new $459 billion Pentagon spending bill that passed the Senate on Wednesday, in a speech today Bill Richardson will call for a significant decrease in Pentagon funding.  He will add that simply throwing money at the Pentagon won't make America safe -- diplomacy will:

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will detail a plan today to rebuildAmerican diplomacy while reshaping the U.S. military with 50,000additional troops and slashing $57 billion annually from Pentagonweapons programs.

"Restoring Americanleadership means abandoning rogue cowboy diplomacy. It means giving upthe idea of stubbornness as a foreign policy," he said. "It meansrestoring those American principles which once allowed us to build thealliances which defeated the Nazis and crumbled the Soviet Union."

Richardsonsaid Wednesday in an interview with The Des Moines Register that hewants to reduce the Pentagon's budget and modernize the military byeliminating what he describes as Cold War weapons systems designed tofight a long-extinct Soviet empire. Some of the savings would be usedto bolster the military, but most of the money would be redirected todomestic programs, such as health care and education, he said.

If the Republicans really believe this is a 'new kind of war,' then as Richardson hinted, we should start acting like it.  Why are we building a missile defense system when the last thing we need is a new arms race with Russia and China?  Why did Bush nominate a Cold War era Russian specialist to head the State Department, when the top security concerns of the 21st century are terrorism and unstable rogue states?

Lastly, keep in mind that Richardson is the only Democratic candidate proposing a balanced budget amendment, which the European Union has in its constitution.  No wonder Europe's currency is stable, unlike ours.

Democrats propose war tax

With the exception of all the military families, none of us have either fought or paid for this war.  The money goes straight to the national debt, while the bodies of brave soldiers come home in planes.  If Iraq truly is about September 11th, then telling Americans to go shopping does not cut it. 

This war tax proposal would help offset the more than $12 billion per month that gets added to the debt as a result of the war.  And yes, the tax is steep.  If you don't like it, then end the war!:

The plan unveiled today by House Appropriations Committee ChairmanDavid R. Obey, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman John P."Jack" Murtha and Rep. Jim McGovern would spread the sacrifice amongall taxpayers by tacking a "war surcharge" on top of the federal incometax. Americans would pay up to 15 percent more on their taxes in orderto raise the $150 billion needed annually to keep the war going.

"If you don’t like the cost, then shut down the war," Obey said today.

Again, I don't think any of us would like this extra income tax.  But as far as reality is concerned, the Iraq war adds to the birth tax, which future generations will pay for.  The GOP talks a lot about the unborn.  Well OK -- Let's stop shouldering the burden to unborn children.  How about we, as living human beings, take responsibility and either pay for this war or end it (no question mark needed, because that wasn't a question).

Bush's budget games

The deadline to renew funding for the federal government for the 2008 fiscal year has passed. When Congress returns on Monday, it will be October, which is when the next fiscal year begins.  Today President Bush signed a document that gives Congress a 48-day extension to pass a budget.

Of course, Congress already supports a budget, but Bush won't sign it because it exceeds his request by $23 billion -- the cost of funding the war for less than two months.  Last year though, the President allowed the Republican Congress to exceed his budget request by $53 million.

In his weekly radio address, Bush took aim:

"Earlier this year, congressional leaders promised to show that theycould be responsible with the people's money. Unfortunately they seemto have chosen the path of higher spending," the president said in hisweekly radio address.

Who is choosing the path to higher spending?  Is it a President that never chose to veto a single spending bill until the Democrats took Congress this January?

Bush's budget hypocrisy: the art of political convenience

Instead of turning this into one of my typically redundant posts about Bush hypocrisy (oops, pardon the title!), how about we just let the facts do the talking.

• In 2006, President Bush allowed Congress to exceed his budget request by $53 billion.
• In 2007, President Bush is scolding Congress for exceeding his budget request by just $22 billion.

So what are the additional increases this year?

The additional funding has long been sought by Democrats and includesbudget increases for dozens of favored domestic programs, includinggrants to local governments, education, homeland security, lawenforcement and health research.

Bottom line: Bush -- the same Bush that campaigned on wanting to protect this country -- is threatening to veto a bill that would protect our homeland from terrorism, increase money for police and give local municipalities the breathing room in their budgets to make their communities more secure.

If you want to expand on the whole "Bush hypocrisy" theme, remember that this was a President who did not veto any spending bills when the Republicans had control of Congress.

For the last time, can you say 'hypocrisy'?  In the end, how can anyone blame us for being redundant when this happens over and over again.

Absurdity of September budget battle

During a time when Congress should devote all of its attention to debating Iraq, leaders on Capitol Hill decided to wait until just this month to address the budget for the 2008 fiscal year, which begins on October 1st.  In other words, the bills must be passed within the next month, or else the federal government cannot fully function.

We can complain all we want about how Democratic leaders should have dealt with this issue earlier.  In fact, the media will do a lot of that.  But what should not be overlooked is the absurdity of Bush's complaint that Democrats are asking for too much money.

Richard Simon shows us the dispute:

Cabinet heads wrote to congressional leaders last week urging them topass appropriations bills "with reasonable and responsible spendinglevels" before the current fiscal year ends.

Bush has proposedexpenditures of $933 billion, a 6.8% increase from this year's spendinglevels. That amount does not include direct expenses for the wars inIraq and Afghanistan. The House bills, by the White House's estimate,exceed the president's level by $22 billion.

In layman's terms, Bush is raising a fuss because the Democrats want to increase the budget by 2%, even though Bush's own version is a 6% increase from last year.  This complaint comes from the same President who never vetoed a single spending bill when the Republicans held Congress, yet the national debt rose by more than $3 trillion.

George W. Bush is the last guy that has any credibility while preaching fiscal discipline.

Washington Times acknowledges reckless GOP spending

No one really faults newspapers for having an ideology.  Just don't let ideology get in the way of facts.  This morning, the Washington Times may have shocked its conservative readership by pointing out that Republicans, not Democrats, are responsible for today's budget mess:

While we welcome the fiscal restraint now being demonstrated byPresident Bush and congressional Republicans, we regret that theirunrestrained profligacy during the previous six years has contributedso much to the fiscal challenges that now confront the nation. Duringthe last six years alone, federal outlays have increased by 49 percent,rising from $1.863 trillion in fiscal 2001 to a projected $2.779trillion for fiscal 2007, which ends Sept. 30. Inflation-adjustedfederal outlays have increased nearly 27 percent in six years. (Federalspending in 2001 was less than 10 percent above its 1995 level.) Forthe 2001-07 period, the average annual real increase in federal outlaysexceeded 4 percent. Because the real economy would have increased byonly 2.5 percent per year between fiscal 2001 and fiscal 2007, federalspending as a share of the economy jumped from 18.5 percent in 2001 (arecession) to 20.2 percent in 2007 (the sixth year of an expansion).

It is a fact that the National Debt currently stands at $8.9 trillion.  It is also a fact that no Republican president has balanced the budget since 1969.

Drowning in red ink

A new nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report released today found the deficit in 2009 and 2010 will rise, only affirming that the party that has not balanced a federal budget since 1969 has a flawed fiscal policy:

However, despite the short-termimprovement, CBO predicts that, in 2009 and 2010, the deficit will riseagain to a greater share of the gross domestic product.  

“Overthe long term, the budget remains on an unsustainable path,” CBO said.“Unless changes are made to current policies, growing demand forresources caused by rising healthcare costs and the nation’s expandingelderly population will put increasing pressure on the budget.”

HouseMajority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said the latest CBO report“reaffirms that Republican policies have created deficits as far as theeye can see.”

Yes, rising health care costs will be a huge problem, because the current system does not value preventive care.  Preventive health care would save money in the long run.