Crossposted from Town Called Dobson
click to enlarge
Ok, I am not a football fan, I am not much of an organized sports fan for that matter. Give me mountain climbing or cross-country cycling any day. But as most Americans did, I watched the Superbowl and the best thing about it was the Half-Time Show!
So this morning I am at the gym trying to kill myself and I hear the price tag of Bush’s new budget, $2.9 trillion – that is in U.S. dollars, not lyra, rupees or sheckels. Dollars. I almost fell out of my lat pulldown machine!
The Boston Herald sums it up nicely:
Responding to the new political realities of a Democratic-controlled Congress, Bush will propose balancing the budget in five years, matching a goal put forward by Democratic leaders. But Bush would achieve that feat while protecting his cherished first-term tax cuts.
The arrival of the massive four-volume set of green budget books, which will cover the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, will be followed by months of debate in Congress. Democrats charged that Bush wants to make painful cuts across a wide swath of government programs while protecting tax cuts that will make the deficit worse after 2012.
I am unsure who gets the duty of breaking the bad news to Mr. Bush, but the U.S. Treasury only takes in about $2 trillion a year, that leaves us with about a $900 billion deficit – and that is not counting all the stuff that has probably been left out of this version.
And all of this while maintaining the choking tax cuts for all of Bush’s pals at the top of the food chain. If they want a tax cut so bad how about this? I propose a 7% tax cut for everyone – all across the board. All we need to do is pay off the debt and that will save us 7% a year in interest payments! (source – pdf)
