Bush proposes $3.1-trillion budget
Military spending would grow and retiree health benefits would shrink under the plan. Democrats in Congress assail it.
WASHINGTON -- President Bush unveiled a $3.1-trillion budget today that would boost military spending and trim health benefits for retirees. The proposal was immediately tagged by Democrats as "irresponsible."
The first spending plan in history to top $3 trillion would freeze or eliminate many domestic spending programs yet still rack up a $407-billion deficit for fiscal 2009, which begins Oct. 1. The Pentagon is the only department for which Bush proposes a significant increase; its budget would grow 7.5% to $515 billion.
"It's a good budget," Bush said after meeting with his Cabinet. "It's a budget that achieves some important objectives. One, it understands our top priority is to defend our country, so we fund our military as well as fund the homeland security."
Because Bush is leaving office in a year, his budget proposal is largely an academic exercise. The Democratic-controlled Congress has responsibility for proposing and passing budget bills, and it's unlikely to adopt his priorities.
The plan's significance is mostly political. Bush's proposal seeks to codify the policies he considers his legacies as president, namely the tax cuts he won in 2001 and 2003; significant increases in military spending; and a few education programs, including his No Child Left Behind legislation.
For Democrats, the Bush budget provides a summary of the policies of his administration they find most egregious: the war in Iraq, tax cuts that worsened the federal deficit, and the squeezing of social programs such as Social Security and Medicare.
"This budget is fiscally irresponsible and highly deceptive, hiding the costs of the war in Iraq while increasing our skyrocketing debt," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). "President Bush's fiscal policies are the worst in our nation's history -- he has turned record surpluses into record deficits -- and this budget is more of the same."
Bush said the proposal would balance the federal budget by 2012. But Democrats said it would do so by relying on accounting tricks, including ignoring most funding for the Iraq war and pretending that the government would essentially permit a huge tax increase on the middle class by not rescinding the alternative minimum tax after Bush leaves office.
"The president proposes more of the same failed policies he has embraced throughout his time in office -- more deficit-financed war spending, more deficit-financed tax cuts tilted to benefit the wealthiest and more borrowing from foreign nations like China and Japan," said Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.
