WSJ: Expanding Bush Budgets Irk Conservatives

[question everything]

Expanding Bush Budgets Irk Conservatives

With Next Blueprint Looming, a Look At How Defense, Entitlements Fuel Increases
By JACKIE CALMES
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
January 24, 2006; Page A4

(snip)

What are mounting are the political untouchables: defense and the so-called mandatory entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The bottom line? Total spending this year and for fiscal 2007, which starts Oct. 1, is heading in the same direction it has since the start of the Bush administration: up. Conservatives are fuming because this is occurring when Republicans control both the White House and Congress. "The White House always says it's defense and homeland security...but even without defense and homeland security it's record spending," says Brian Riedl, budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "The brakes are off everywhere."

Here is a guide to spending during Mr. Bush's watch:

The big picture: The budget request for fiscal 2007 is expected to total about $2.7 trillion -- up from nearly $1.8 trillion when he took office. According to the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, total spending rose from 2001 through 2005 by an average 7% annually, double the pace of the previous five years -- and nearly triple the average inflation rate.

(snip)

An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank, shows that mandatory spending grew to 10.8% of GDP this year, from 10% at the start of the Bush administration. Medicare has been growing twice as fast as Social Security amid rising health costs -- and that is before the tab for Mr. Bush's new prescription-drug benefit. Entitlement spending is projected to explode as baby boomers retire. "We're going to have to do something about" such spending, Mr. Bush said at an economic forum last week in Virginia. But he added, reflecting the failure of his push to overhaul Social Security, "a lot of folks in Washington don't want to do anything about it -- it's too hard politically."

Discretionary spending for defense and domestic programs is what the president and Congress haggle over in yearly appropriations bills, and the type of spending many Americans associate with the budget. But at $894 billion in spending authority for 2006, it is less than a third of the entire pie. The center found that funding for discretionary programs has grown to 7.7% of GDP, counting expected war funding, from 6.8% in 2001 and "all of this growth came in defense and related security areas."

(snip)

With debt payments, defense, homeland security and entitlements off the chopping block, Mr. Bush and Congress are left whittling at the one-sixth of the budget that goes to domestic discretionary spending. Only this funding has fallen as a share of the economy -- to less than 3.1% in the current year -- from 3.4% before Mr. Bush arrived, the center found... But relative to the total budget, such "pork" spending is the size of a rounding error. "Earmarks aren't the problem," says G. William Hoagland, budget adviser to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist of Tennessee, "and the more we talk about them, the more we divert our attention from the real spending problems" -- chiefly entitlements.

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Write to Jackie Calmes at [e-mail]

URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB113806257817454165.html (subscription)

[NanceGreggs]

1. A little late?

"Conservatives are fuming because this is occurring when Republicans control both the White House and Congress."

Excuse me, but WHO was VOTING for all of these budget-busting initiatives in the first place? Oh, right, it was all of those Conservatives who have been saying 'deficits don't matter' for the past five years ...

[ClintonTyree]

2. And shrub has yet to use his veto power.........

on any spending bill. True CONservative values......down the drain along with states' rights, the power of the executive, small government etc. etc. etc.

[Double T]

3. The SOB social and fiscal 'conservatives' broke the bank.......

and left the future generations to live with the disastrous aftermath. Wait till a NEW administration finally takes over the oval office; the real deficit numbers will be staggering and insurmountable.

[NanceGreggs]

4. And once we take back the White House ...

... the new Democratic president, and all elected Dems, should NEVER STOP POINTING OUT what efforts they've had to make in order to clean up the mess left by G.W. BUSH.

People get too complacent, too fast. After the prosperity of the Clinton years, too many Repubs figured they could get THEIR guy in, and he'd pick up the credit for what Bill had done.

The mantra of the Democratic Party should be 'NEVER FORGET' what the last Republican in office did. That's a cry that should be trotted out, again and again, for eight years ... and then some!

[question everything]

5. They ignore two major causes

First - cutting taxes at time of "war" - their justification for spending on "defense." And, two - their giving free ride to the pharmaceutical companies which is a major component of the new Medicare bill and of the increasing in medical cost that far exceeds inflation.

If they reigned on CEOs compensation, for example; if they reigned on medical care they could have gained some control over the deficit.