Bush’s Budget Games Begin

The White House presented Congress with a $2.5 trillion budget today. Mr. Bush’s flaks say it’s the most “austere” budget since the Reagan years. It is hard to decide if this is a howling ignorance of the word’s meaning or merely a groaning lack of data about past budgets. If the spending axe were used properly, Mr. Bush could halve the deficit this year rather than in four years. This would, of course, exclude a needless war abroad, but he might not even have to raise taxes.

Naturally, Mr. Bush’s budget isn’t austere at all -- any deficit that runs to nine digits can’t possible qualify as such. It is spendthrift and unbalanced, and is the embodiment of the “borrow and spend” orthodoxy that has become part of the Republican prescription. He is like to hear from his own party’s deficit hawks, but at the end of the day, they’ll let him get most of the cuts he wants. But they won’t force additional reductions on him, and that is the problem.

Some of the Bush cuts are pretty sound. The Amtrak subsidy is going down, except for the northeastern seaboard. Rail travel needs a great deal of subsidizing to be an alternative to air travel. Chicago to Denver is a damn long train ride compared with a couple of hours in the air for about the same money. And the agricultural subsidies deserve reduction; the family farm they were designed to save is still endangered, but agribusiness gets a nice piece of change from these programs. By all means, cap them.

However, the missile defense system continues to burn cash. It hasn’t worked in any test worthy of the name, and the threat to the US is not from ballistic missiles. The money would be better spent on port security. That’s about $10 billion a year right there. And the US doesn’t need any more submarines, and the F-22 is too expensive for a world without dogfights. And if the Pentagon received $401.1 billion, which is what if got last year, that would be $18.2 million saved there. If the nation is at war, surely spending should increase? More money for aircraft carriers won’t defeat suicide bombers; better intelligence will.

And on the domestic front, the International Space Station and the space shuttle merely detract from the real science the robots do. There’s a few billion more. And while the axe is swinging, prohibition of marijuana costs law enforcement, corrections departments and customs officials billions for a result that is, at best, a defeat in the drug war (to say nothing of the erosion of civil liberties that this phony fight has forced upon free Americans).

Of course, this is the fun of the budget. Everyone’s pet programs are under threat, and the wheeling and dealing makes life in politics more amusing, if less salubrious for the republic. The game is afoot, Watson.

© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.

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