Pacific Views

It's Your Money, so What The Heck is George Spending It On?

George W Bush likes to say, "It's your money." So why the heck does he feel free to run up charges on your credit card? The credit card debt you will leave for your children and your grandchildren to pay off because you are spending beyond your means?

The last budget proposed by Bush shows that he cares nothing about "your money". It is all about how to "get theirs" before people realize Bushco has pickpocketed the taxpayer's wallet. Bush and his friends will do very, very well, even when the rest of us have no schools for our kids, no CDC, no environmental protection, no roads, no national parks -- none of the things that we used to believe were what we paid our taxes for.

Bush has said he is dedicated to cutting the "waste" in spending so as to cut the deficit in half in a few years. And he is dedicated to making his tax cuts permanent so the government gets less and less money every year. Cutting the deficit in half by targetting waste sounds good. But as Dwight Meredith so aptly shows, eliminating all non-defense discretionary budget programs (not just cutting back) doesn't get us to Bush's goal of halving the deficit.

I am not kidding. We have eliminated all federal government discretionary functions except Defense and Homeland Security and the budget remains more than $130 billion in the hole.

The government does not take in enough money to fund mandatory spending as well as discretionary spending on defense and Homeland Security. Eliminating all domestic discretionary spending of the Federal government will not balance the budget.

If we are serious about balancing the budget, domestic discretionary spending should be restrained but that is not enough. To balance the budget, we have to increase revenues or cut military, Homeland Security and/or entitlement spending (e.g. Granny's check or her health care).

For any domestic discretionary spending you wish to retain, be it meat inspectors, space exploration, autism research, the FBI or whatever, the money must come from one of four places. Those are, once again, additional revenue, entitlements, defense/homeland security, or deficits.

Nevertheless, you, Mr. or Ms. Taxpayer, can enjoy your missile defense program and your total surveillance program and that moon base that will protect you from terrorists. Certainly your grandchildren won't mind not being able to attend a college to benefit you and your generation.

Besides what's to worry? Cheney said "deficits don't matter". Stop listening to that guy behind the curtain.