Reckless budgeting
A Times EditorialThe House and Senate budgets mirror the president's spending plan, including tax cuts for the wealthy financed on the backs of the poor.
Published March 12, 2005
What is America's greatest financial need right now? If you answered more capital gains tax cuts for wealthy investors, you're probably a congressional Republican. If you answered a smaller deficit, help for veterans and affordable health care, you're probably dreaming.
Budgets emerging from the House and Senate don't differ significantly from each other or from President Bush's spending plan, except on one point. The Senate would shave Bush's proposed $100-billion in additional tax cuts to $70-billion, mainly to extend tax breaks on profits from stock sales. The House would agree to every tax cut Bush wants and maybe add some of its own.
The question, of course, is why would Congress consider even a dollar more in tax cuts when the nation is saddled with a strength-sapping budget deficit, a war against terrorism and a half-baked plan to privatize Social Security? A compassionate person with a dose of common sense wouldn't, which apparently leaves out most in Congress.
The nation does need to restrain spending, but Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress put too much of the burden on those least able to bear it. They would cut spending for poor families and veterans who seek medical care, but give more to those who buy and sell stocks.
"Surreal," is the term Sen. Kent Conrad, D- N.D., had for the proposed budget. He is being too kind. Cruel, reckless and unfair would be much more to the point.
Democrats and some moderate Republicans say they will fight some of the tax cuts, but there is little reason to believe they will succeed in the conservative feeding frenzy that budgeting has become. Congress isn't even addressing the rising cost of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or a reduction in the alternative minimum tax, or the cost of private investment accounts for Social Security - which would add trillions more to the deficit. Maybe Congress can borrow some ideas from Charles Dickens' novels and take the money out of the orphans' porridge fund.
This is only the beginning of the budget process, so just wait. Matters could get much worse.