Bush's budget… DOA?
But already, this is a budget that has . Under the delightful headline, "Bush's paper cuts," (LOVE it!), Slate.com's says:
very few friendsToday's Papers
Yes, the budget it out again… and it only took until mid-morning to get it posted online. (For awhile Monday morning, OMB actually had the fiscal 2006 budget posted on its front page. Talk about confusing. And even today, if you go to OMB's e-gov site and click on budget, they still have fiscal 2006 budget items posted.)
[Here is the link if you want to relive last year's proposal.... Oh! And we offer a special thanks to a senior OMB person who caught a FCW typo! Yes! It does happen on occasion!]
First off, why do we put so much effort to cover the budget? The long and short of it: It is such an indication of an administration's priorities. That's what a budget is, after all, right?
Here is how the WSJ.com put it:
A vision, a political statement, a budget. The $2.77 trillion financial plan submitted to Congress yesterday is every bit a Bush administration view of how the federal government should tax and spend, and how policies should be carried out and funded, opening an election-year debate fraught with real-life and political consequences.
very few friendsToday's Papers
Not that any of this is likely to happen. As the NYT gently notes, "It is unclear how much appetite Congress will have in a critical midterm election year for further spending cuts." One financial analyst was not so gentle, telling the Post, "This budget is not going to happen. Of all the budgets I've seen recently, this is the one going nowhere the fastest." Moderate Republicans seemed intent to prove that point, with Sen. Arlen Specter describing some of the cuts as "scandalous."