February 02, 2004

Here is an outline of Bush's budget proposal. Note well. This is only a proposal. What gets promised and what gets done haven't been the same thing. Note that there are actual proposed spending cuts. Proposed.

Stephen Moore weighs in. Quotable:

The president will predictably boast that this is a lean budget that spends money judiciously on top national priorities like homeland security and not a penny more. He will try to assure conservatives that this budget limits the growth of federal non-defense, non-security spending (social programs) to less than 2 percent. His Democratic rivals will complain that this is a penny-pinching budget that under-funds education, health care, the environment, and on down the line.

They are both wrong. A federal budget that will spend more money in a single year than the entire GDP of France and three times what it cost to fight World War II can hardly be disparaged as inadequate or celebrated as tight-fisted. Uncle Sam, Inc., will spend more money in just this year than it spent combined between 1787 and 1900 — even after adjusting for inflation. Ironically enough, we are now celebrating the ten-year anniversary of Newt Gingrich's bold declaration that "we Republicans will make government smaller and smarter." It didn't exactly turn out that way ..

If you took all our government spent and divided it evenly among all families of four in America, each family would be more than $50,000 richer. This is double the level of spending in 1960 and fourteen times the amount government spent in 1900 ..

In 1940 there were 4 million Americans working for government and 11 million working in manufacturing. Today, there are 7 million more Americans working for government (21.5 million) than in all manufacturing industries (14.5 million). We have shifted from an economy of people who make things, to an economy of people who tax, regulate, subsidize, and outlaw things ..

President Bush has allowed the budget to grow by 8 percent per year after inflation in his first three budgets .. In his bloated budget for 2005, the president seeks funds to keep marriages intact, to prevent overeating, to encourage teenagers not to have sex, and to help give Americans the willpower to stop smoking ..

UPDATE: Dean's Worldprovides a critique of Moore.

Posted by Greg Ransom | TrackBack