Debunking a presidential budget myth

Everyone is focused on September right now – as well they should be – but everyone is focusing on a portion (Iraq) of the big picture.

The real fight is about the budget for FY 2008, which starts on 01 October. Let’s be kind in our assessment, and just say that the administration certainly seems to be embracing magical thinking where the nation’s checkbook is concerned. You see, if we aren’t kind, we have to say that the president is lying his ass off and pushing malicious propaganda. (The latter is likely true, but we are feeling inexplicably magnanimous tonight. If it persists, I'll get checked out.)

Last Thursday the president spoke to the American Legislative Exchange Council in Philadelphia, and his speech was so far divorced from reality that, frankly, it left me wondering what exactly was the combination of drugs he was enjoying at the time? I mean, the BS is so easily debunked that it seems like they aren't even trying any longer.

He boasted that he had overseen a budget deficit that has been declining in recent years, and that his policies would realize a surplus by FY12.

Problem is, he forgot a couple of really, really salient facts. (Or maybe they are inconvenient so he committed an intentional sin of omission?)

If he is going to take credit for reducing the deficit, he has to admit that he created it. Prior to his administration, there were four consecutive budget-surplus years, with a forecast of $5.6 trillion in continuing surpluses. This robust economic forecast was the justification for the Bush tax cuts, but even after the surpluses were revealed to be imaginary, massive, record-high deficit spending continued unabated. (Never before have we cut taxes in time of war.)

Additionally, the word “debt” never fell from his lips during the entire speech. He either doesn’t realize, or again opted to willfully omit, that while the deficit is falling, the debt is climbing. In fact, his term in office will realize a $3 trillion increase in the national debt.

But it gets better! He said we have a responsibility to fix our problems! It wouldn’t be fair to pass these problems off "to future Congresses or future generations." All the while ignoring that the interest payments on the debt will be crippling for the next three decades, thanks to that $3 trillion dollars added to the debt. Oh – I almost forgot! There is a hell of a lot of short-term borrowing that is coming due and we don’t have the cash to satisfy the debt. So we have to refinance. (We all know someone who got in trouble with a payday loan that took on a life of its own. This is like that, only on a national scale and its trillions instead of hundreds.) The ghost of the George Bush presidency is going to haunt this nation for years to come.

When he bragged that the current (FY 2007) deficit would be "lower than the national average over the last 10 years."

There is only one way to make that statement true: omit the years FY98-01 and still call it a decade. When FY98-01 are included, the average deficit drops to 0.9% of GDP, but the number that the president cited for FY08 was significantly higher, 1.5% GDP.

Translation: He wasn’t really saying this years deficit represents the lowest percentage of GDP in a decade, it will just be lower than any of the six consecutive deficits he has presided over. (Doesn’t sound quite so sexy that way, though, does it?)

He went far afield and insisted that congress should send him budget appropriations individually, not in a combined omnibus spending bill, and not in the form of continuing resolutions, but individual appropriations bills. (This has never been asked before, and is quite baffling in the petulant audacity it takes to even ask.) Not once in the past six years has the White House expressed any concern whatsoever Interesting, given that FY01, 03, 04, and 05 were all funded by omnibus spending bills, and the entire government has operated on continuing resolutions this year, FY07, because the republican rubber-stamp 109^th congress failed to pass a budget.

But the coup de grace was the proclamation that the Congress was obligated to, “in a time of war” pass the Pentagon budget before the August Recess! (Isn’t there something happening in September that makes that suggestion especially galling?)

Out understanding is not so stunted as the president prefers to think it is, apparently. For instance, we know that the fiscal year does not start until 01 October, and that any funds appropriated for FY 2008 now would not be available for dispersal until then, no matter when the Pentagon appropriations are passed! His petulant, pandering insistence is disingenuous at best. Or maybe he just forgot…

His credibility on this issue is suspect in any case. Over the past six years, Congress has adopted the Pentagon appropriation by the start of the summer recess only once (FY05). Twice (FY04 and 07) it was enacted in the last days of September. Three times (FY02, 03 and 06) it was enacted well after the fiscal year began. At no time during this period did the White House ever call on Congress to adopt the bill beforethe August recess or criticize it for not getting the work done before the fiscal year began.

Also casting a cloud on his credibility is his complete and utter refusal to criticize the Iraqi parliament for taking an August recess. Again he strikes a disingenuous pose. That “time of war” he referenced is taking place in their country and they are off on holiday after accomplishing exactly nothing.

Now, analytical disagreements are par for the course when budget and appropriations projects are debated. But the president’s statements about the budget are so patently and obviously false that they read much more like propaganda than policy differences. The mind boggles at the audacity. It really truly boggles.

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Durbin to Cheney: “Go F#%K Yourself”

On Tuesday, Senator Dick Durbin stripped the funding for the operations of the Vice Presidents office and staff from an appropriations bill for the coming fiscal year. Until the vice resident complies with the parts of an executive order that covers the handling of classified information.

The issue at hand involves a requirement that offices of the executive branch provide information to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives, an oversight office on data that is classified or declassified within those offices.

Cheney has absurdly asserted that he is not a part of the executive branch, and therefore exempt from an order he complied with for at least two years, then suddenly stopped.

Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said Cheney's office was flouting requirements that it comply with the reporting requirements on classified information.

"Neither Mr. Cheney or his staff is above the law or the Constitution," Durbin said. "For the vice president to believe that he has no responsibility to meet this requirement of the law is a dereliction of duty."

Frankly, there is only one reason I can think of for this unprecedented action on behalf of the vice resident – something got away from him, or from one of his lackeys. Something big. Something that could have a devastating effect on national security. Something they don’t want anyone to know.

There is simply not other explanation for the patently absurd notion that the vice-executive is exempt from rules covering the executive branch.

Durbin’s decision to strip the vice presidents office out of the executive office budget was part of an appropriations bill that funds the White House, the Treasury Department, and several smaller agencies.

I am heartened to see that the Democrats in Congress are starting to stand up to these fools. I can’t be sure just yet – but I think what we are seeing is a “rope-a-dope” strategy on behalf of the Dems – and the loyalists might have punched themselves out, and now the pummeling is about to start.

For the sake of the nation I love, I hope so.

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Massive Spending and Broken Branches (of the military)

As Congress takes up the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, they are confronting the largest defense budget as percentage of all expenditures since World War II.

This massive spending increase comes at the same time top military commanders make grim predictions about manpower, materiel and readiness. In spite of all that additional spending, our military is strained nearly to the breaking point after five years of desert warfare, and four years of fighting on two fronts.

Army Gen. Bantz Craddock of the U.S. European Command (EUCOM) told a house committee last week that he is skeptical that the United States could mount a response to a new crisis in Europe "I'm skeptical that we have adequate forces available."

Troops who come back from Iraq get little or no down-time. They instead almost immediately start preparing for their next deployment. Readiness suffers because training is not happening. "We're not doing amphibious training, we're not doing mountain-warfare training, or other training that would be needed in another type of contingency," Gen. James Conway, the Marine commandant, testified in February before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The Navy and the Air Force are voicing similar concerns, even though those branches have born less of the burden, troops-wise. "We are currently meeting our wartime requirements, but our future dominance is at risk," Air Force Gen. John Corley testified at the same hearing. Some of the Air Force’s C-130 cargo planes "can no longer deploy to combat because we have literally flown the wings off of them," he said. "The center wing boxes are cracked."

The Navy has dispatched thousands of Medics, Seabee units and detonation experts to support coalition ground forces in Iraq, and the top Navy brass worries that the sailors are being used up. (The highly-technical Navy and Air Force spend a lot more money training their enlisted personnel than the Army and Marines spend training infantry.) Admiral Robert Willard, Vice Chief of Naval Operations, told members of congress last week that the medical deployments have “stressed our ability to provide health care" to sailors at home.

It isn’t the dire prediction that retired General and former Secretary of State Colin Powell that “the Army is about broken.” – but then, Powell was not an active-duty flag-rank when he made his statements before congress.

Given that commanders always display an upbeat attitude about the state of their own service when they parade before congressional committees, open declarations of concern are more than a little noteworthy.

House Armed Services Committee chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO-04) last week ordered two congressional investigations be undertaken; one on the effects of the war in Iraq on military equipment and the other on the recent reports that soldiers are being redeployed to combat zones after sustaining performance-impairing injuries.

I can not think of a more appropriate time to undertake those vital investigations ordered by Chairman Skelton than four years into a vanity war that is the root cause of the destruction tearing at our military – a professional force that took 35 years to create in the wake of Vietnam is now teetering on the brink of destruction after being used like toy soldiers pursuing the follies of a fool.

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