Politics: The Budget

or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Deficit.

Darn that pesky budget. Who knew that when Bush made campaign promises like cutting the deficit in half, people would actually expect him to follow through? Add on funding more community health clinics, homeland security spending, and increasing the Pell Grants (nevermind that he will just decrease the number of students eligible for them), and the budget is really starting to get stretched thin. Lucky for Bush, math has never been as much of a hard and fast rule for him as it is for all those other people.

As CNN's Lou Dobbs pointed out on his show tonight, Bush is being quite creative when it comes to spending. He is decreasing veteran's health benefits, cutting programs that help inner city children get into college, and best of all, not counting spending on Iraq, Afghanistan, or his social security overhaul. At this rate, I bet he can get the next year's budget down to $1. Heck, that's like a surplus! Let's cut taxes again!

Best quote on this issue goes to Sen. Kent Coprad (D-ND): None of this adds up. I mean, this isn't even close. None of this adds up. And the result is, I think, going to be very, very serious damage to the fiscal strength of our country.