A Fiscal Responsibility Update

Those tax-and-spend Democrats are at it again. Their budget bill has $11 billion more than Bush's proposal, and would squander it on useless programs for education and health research. That figure is almost what the U.S. spends on the Iraq war every month. Just think of the waste.

The White House didn't tarry with a veto threat on this. It came Saturday, before they had even seen the bill. The Associated Press reported White House budget chief Jim Nussle (wouldn't you just love to have this bozo's job?) as saying: "This so-called compromise would result in more excess spending than even the Democrats' original budget included. This is not fiscally responsible."

This from an administration that, aside from the Iraq war, is ready to add $50 billion to the annual deficit to keep upper-middle-class people from having to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax. (See previous post)

Onward.

To put this in bigger perspective, the $11 billion that the Bushies are talking about is part of an appropriations bill that hovers around $500 billion plus. We're talking about an increase of around 2% to help out some underfunded domestic needs. Hearing them label this as fiscal irresponsibility is, at best, cartoonish, considering the tax bonanzas they have handed out to the wealthy during the very time when shared sacrifice should have been stressed. And, to repeat myself, there is the cost of this (very needless) war.

I have long given up on the Bush administration's public minions ever talking like they remember what happened yesterday. They assume, rightly, that much of the public doesn't. But some people manage. I hope many will remember come November.