Have American's been dropped into a pot of lukewarm

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Bush's Budget Ploy
Date: 4/14/01
Source: The Washington Post


Few stories are more useful in politics than the tale of the frog dropped into a pot of lukewarm water. The frog is quite content. Then, slowly, the heat under the pot is steadily raised. Because the process is so gradual, the frog doesn't notice how hot the water is getting until it starts to boil. Then it's too late.

Think of President Bush's new spending plan as the frog-in-the-water budget. The crafty genius of this document, released in the shadows of the now-concluded standoff with China, is also what's wrong with it. Bush doesn't raise a ruckus this year with big spending cuts, but he creates a framework that will force such cuts in the years ahead.

Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich thought they could cook the frog fast. Neither could get the budget cuts he wanted. Bush has put his faith in what Martin Luther King Jr. once called, in a different context, "the tranquilizing drug of gradualism."

Bush avoids big fights this year by limiting his cutbacks to a few areas -- among them the environment, some housing and health programs, and agriculture. Democrats have their talking points on the cuts, and some of the cuts may be restored.

But what really counts is what doesn't happen this year. Bush's budget plan allows for an overall spending increase this year of 4 percent for programs other than the big entitlements such as Social Security. But by 2004, he allows an increase of only 2 1/2 percent, and Bush's budget doesn't even detail his plans for new defense spending -- conveniently, the administration's defense review puts off final decisions on the military until after this budget and its big tax cut are passed.

Consider also that the president has said he'll propose privatizing part of Social Security. That program carries a large price tag, too. Sen. John McCain said regularly during the Republican primaries that you couldn't hope to have a big tax cut and a privatization program at the same time. And, oh yes, there's also Medicare reform and a prescription drug benefit. So where will the money come from?

There's a pattern here. First, Bush wanted Congress to approve his $ 1.6 trillion tax cut before he presented his budget. Now he's presented a budget, and it kicks many of the biggest spending cuts -- and thus the hardest choices -- further down the road. Once the tax cut is in place and the money is not there anymore, Bush can turn around and say big spending cuts are necessary and "responsible."

"Rather than one year of big cuts, he's willing to wait and achieve what he wants over several years," one congressional budget specialist said of Bush. "You've got two jaws to a vise -- the declining revenues from the tax cut, and this consensus that we can't run a deficit." Much bigger spending cuts become inevitable -- but later.

Bush's short-term strategy of small cuts -- "a little bit here, a little bit there," as another budget analyst put it -- disguises how fundamental the choice over the Bush tax cut really is. "This is a watershed budget," says Rep. John Spratt of South Carolina, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "The decisions we make in this budget will affect our priorities for years to come." But the tax-cuts-first, budget-cuts-later strategy postpones the unpleasant aspects of the plan.

Fortunately for the cause of candor, Spratt notes, the Senate has already acknowledged in its budget resolution that Bush's spending levels are unrealistic. The Senate added about $ 600 billion in new spending. Most of this was not for the "pork" that Bush likes to -- in some cases, rightly -- denounce. It was for programs with wide support that politicians in both parties promised last year.

The Senate proposed to spend $ 147 billion more than Bush for a Medicare drug benefit, $ 224 billion more for education, and $ 63.5 billion more for agriculture, and it backed smaller increases on behalf of health coverage for children with disabilities, veterans' health and home health care.

If Congress wants to finance these priorities even within the optimistic terms laid out by Bush for a balanced budget, it will have to reduce the tax cut by more than a third. The Senate has already trimmed the tax cut. But all the pressure from the Republican-led House will be to push it back up again. The question for Congress: Is it willing to go back on all those promises the Senate just made, or will it pay for them?

Congress can debate our nation's priorities before it passes a big tax cut, or afterward. But as any frog will tell you, postponing the difficult choices won't make them go away. Campaign for America's Future
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-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), May 20, 2001

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COOL[ANALOGY] OF=DENYING GOD. ATHEIST'S--FUNDIE BASHER'S-CHRISTAIN-MOCKER'S!! IS SATAN COOKING YOUR BUTT,& YOU DON,T SENSE IT???

-- al-d. (dogs@zianet.com), May 23, 2001.

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