New York Times Editorial - Emergency spending spree
New York Times Editorial - Emergency spending spree
Copyright by The New York Times
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2006
President George W. Bush is threatening to veto this year's emergency budget supplement for the Iraq war and hurricane recovery efforts - he's suddenly shocked, shocked that his own Republican-led Senate has steadily inflated it with $14 billion in unrelated goodies.
As if this sort of fiscal mayhem is not the now-familiar fallout from the administration's own signature fecklessness in adding to the record debt and deficit for future generations to handle.
This year's $92 billion "must pass" measure, while supposedly restricted to the pressing costs of the war and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast repairs, has been turned into a fiscal Christmas tree. Billions have been added for extra farm subsidies, highway repairs, higher education, veterans' health care and forest maintenance, and even a $15 million bauble for something that's called a "seafood promotion strategy."
Taxpayers interested in fiscal sanity should first wonder why, three years into the war, its costs are still being rushed through Congress by administration planners who are obviously wary of detailed accountability. No less irresponsible is the growing penchant of members of Congress to bypass the regular budget process in favor of giving their pet projects a ride aboard the White House's annual "emergency" express.
What's at the heart of the veto threat is an intramural Republican war over a feared mutiny by voters this November. House Republicans running as fiscal "hawks" (after years of cheerleading for the costly Bush tax cuts for the affluent) back the president's budget request; the Senate Republicans who are more concerned about popular spending programs opt for the add-ons. No one mentions the responsibility to find revenues to someday pay for all this, plus debt costs.
Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, made that point last month in his previous role as a conservative polemicist: "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget."
Copyright by The New York Times
THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2006
President George W. Bush is threatening to veto this year's emergency budget supplement for the Iraq war and hurricane recovery efforts - he's suddenly shocked, shocked that his own Republican-led Senate has steadily inflated it with $14 billion in unrelated goodies.
As if this sort of fiscal mayhem is not the now-familiar fallout from the administration's own signature fecklessness in adding to the record debt and deficit for future generations to handle.
This year's $92 billion "must pass" measure, while supposedly restricted to the pressing costs of the war and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast repairs, has been turned into a fiscal Christmas tree. Billions have been added for extra farm subsidies, highway repairs, higher education, veterans' health care and forest maintenance, and even a $15 million bauble for something that's called a "seafood promotion strategy."
Taxpayers interested in fiscal sanity should first wonder why, three years into the war, its costs are still being rushed through Congress by administration planners who are obviously wary of detailed accountability. No less irresponsible is the growing penchant of members of Congress to bypass the regular budget process in favor of giving their pet projects a ride aboard the White House's annual "emergency" express.
What's at the heart of the veto threat is an intramural Republican war over a feared mutiny by voters this November. House Republicans running as fiscal "hawks" (after years of cheerleading for the costly Bush tax cuts for the affluent) back the president's budget request; the Senate Republicans who are more concerned about popular spending programs opt for the add-ons. No one mentions the responsibility to find revenues to someday pay for all this, plus debt costs.
Tony Snow, the new White House press secretary, made that point last month in his previous role as a conservative polemicist: "A Republican president and a Republican Congress have lost control of the federal budget."
posted by Carlos T Mock at 7:37 AM
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