JohnnyBz00LS
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Posted on Tue, Feb. 08, 2005
Analysis
Bush budget a rejection of ’90s conservatism
By Janet Hook
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON – Even as President Bush proposes significant cuts in health care, farm subsidies and other domestic programs, his new budget makes one thing clear about the legacy of his first term in the White House: The era of big government is back.
Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, if approved by Congress, would be more than one-third bigger than the budget he inherited four years ago. It is a monument to how much Republicans’ guiding fiscal philosophy has changed over the 10 years since the GOP’s “Contract with America” called for a balanced budget and abolition of entire Cabinet agencies.
No longer are Republicans arguing with Democrats about whether government should be big or small. Instead, they are at odds over what kind of big government the United States should have.
“This Republican Party is much less fiscally conservative than the one that took Congress 10 years ago,” said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and policy center in Washington. “That Congress believed in eliminating entire departments that weren’t justified. You don’t hear that these days. I wish we did.”
Bush is releasing his budget at a time when many fiscal conservatives in his party are dismayed by how much he has allowed federal spending and the deficit to rise during his first term in the White House. This vocal but outnumbered faction of the GOP was furious when, in 2003, Bush signed a big increase in federal farm subsidies and pushed Congress to expand Medicare to cover prescription drug benefits.
Bush has moved to placate those critics in this budget by restating his pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009; by pledging to abolish or cut spending for 150 programs; and by taking on fast-growing entitlements like farm subsidies and Medicaid.
But many analysts view those promises with skepticism because Bush in his first term had a disappointing record of confronting Congress on popular spending programs. He has never vetoed a bill, making him the first president so restrained since James Garfield, who was assassinated in his first year.
“This is a promise in which his position so far is not credible,” said William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and a former economic adviser to President Reagan. “President Bush also promised to reduce the deficit in half last year, but it went up $15 billion.”
Much of the deficit growth during Bush’s first term was the result of four rounds of tax cuts and increases in defense and domestic security programs following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush and fellow Republicans argued for the last three years’ budgets that eliminating the deficit had to take a back seat because the country was at war and the economy was sagging. Now that the economy has improved and Iraq has elected its own government, the pressure is on Bush to combat the deficit.
But Bush’s budget projections likely understate future deficits because they do not include the full cost of three priorities at the core of what Bush seeks as his second-term legacy: ongoing military operations in Iraq; making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, and overhauling Social Security.
Spending for domestic security would grow 7 percent over last year. Medicare is on track to increase by $50 billion, just more than 17 percent. Bush says those selective increases and cuts amount to “setting priorities.” Democrats say it confirms their worst fears that the deficit is being used only as a pretext for cutting programs favored by Democrats – such as Amtrak trains that are particularly popular along the East Coast, Medicaid programs and job training programs.
“What this president is doing is what Republican presidents and Congresses have been doing for a generation: using the budget deficit to justify the destruction of programs the American people trust and rely on,” said John Lawrence, Democratic staff director of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Democrats may not be alone in resisting Bush’s domestic spending cuts. Republicans have joined them in blocking past efforts to abolish popular programs. Of the 65 programs Bush proposed eliminating last year, Congress abolished only five.
Republicans’ commitment to eliminating the deficit, a cornerstone of the Contract with America, seems a thing of the past. Party members now argue that the deficit – although it has hit a record in absolute numbers – is manageable because, when measured as a share of the Gross National Product, it is not as large as Reagan’s 1983 deficit.
But Stanley Collender, a budget analyst with Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington, said that amounts to “using the budget failure of one Republican to make the large deficits of another appear to be less troubling.”
“President Bush would never admit this, but he has transformed the party into the party of permanent big deficits,” he said.
Analysis
Bush budget a rejection of ’90s conservatism
By Janet Hook
Los Angeles Times
WASHINGTON – Even as President Bush proposes significant cuts in health care, farm subsidies and other domestic programs, his new budget makes one thing clear about the legacy of his first term in the White House: The era of big government is back.
Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget for 2006, if approved by Congress, would be more than one-third bigger than the budget he inherited four years ago. It is a monument to how much Republicans’ guiding fiscal philosophy has changed over the 10 years since the GOP’s “Contract with America” called for a balanced budget and abolition of entire Cabinet agencies.
No longer are Republicans arguing with Democrats about whether government should be big or small. Instead, they are at odds over what kind of big government the United States should have.
“This Republican Party is much less fiscally conservative than the one that took Congress 10 years ago,” said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research and policy center in Washington. “That Congress believed in eliminating entire departments that weren’t justified. You don’t hear that these days. I wish we did.”
Bush is releasing his budget at a time when many fiscal conservatives in his party are dismayed by how much he has allowed federal spending and the deficit to rise during his first term in the White House. This vocal but outnumbered faction of the GOP was furious when, in 2003, Bush signed a big increase in federal farm subsidies and pushed Congress to expand Medicare to cover prescription drug benefits.
Bush has moved to placate those critics in this budget by restating his pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009; by pledging to abolish or cut spending for 150 programs; and by taking on fast-growing entitlements like farm subsidies and Medicaid.
But many analysts view those promises with skepticism because Bush in his first term had a disappointing record of confronting Congress on popular spending programs. He has never vetoed a bill, making him the first president so restrained since James Garfield, who was assassinated in his first year.
“This is a promise in which his position so far is not credible,” said William A. Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, and a former economic adviser to President Reagan. “President Bush also promised to reduce the deficit in half last year, but it went up $15 billion.”
Much of the deficit growth during Bush’s first term was the result of four rounds of tax cuts and increases in defense and domestic security programs following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Bush and fellow Republicans argued for the last three years’ budgets that eliminating the deficit had to take a back seat because the country was at war and the economy was sagging. Now that the economy has improved and Iraq has elected its own government, the pressure is on Bush to combat the deficit.
But Bush’s budget projections likely understate future deficits because they do not include the full cost of three priorities at the core of what Bush seeks as his second-term legacy: ongoing military operations in Iraq; making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent, and overhauling Social Security.
Spending for domestic security would grow 7 percent over last year. Medicare is on track to increase by $50 billion, just more than 17 percent. Bush says those selective increases and cuts amount to “setting priorities.” Democrats say it confirms their worst fears that the deficit is being used only as a pretext for cutting programs favored by Democrats – such as Amtrak trains that are particularly popular along the East Coast, Medicaid programs and job training programs.
“What this president is doing is what Republican presidents and Congresses have been doing for a generation: using the budget deficit to justify the destruction of programs the American people trust and rely on,” said John Lawrence, Democratic staff director of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
Democrats may not be alone in resisting Bush’s domestic spending cuts. Republicans have joined them in blocking past efforts to abolish popular programs. Of the 65 programs Bush proposed eliminating last year, Congress abolished only five.
Republicans’ commitment to eliminating the deficit, a cornerstone of the Contract with America, seems a thing of the past. Party members now argue that the deficit – although it has hit a record in absolute numbers – is manageable because, when measured as a share of the Gross National Product, it is not as large as Reagan’s 1983 deficit.
But Stanley Collender, a budget analyst with Financial Dynamics, a business communications firm in Washington, said that amounts to “using the budget failure of one Republican to make the large deficits of another appear to be less troubling.”
“President Bush would never admit this, but he has transformed the party into the party of permanent big deficits,” he said.
