President Obama Gears Up To Pass Progressive Budget, Vows To Take His Opponents Head On

Now this is the President that I voted for:



We tried bipartisanship with the stimulus bill and all but three Republicans in Congress figuratively spit in the Democratic majority's face for it. Now it is time to pass a budget and it will reflect American values, not the wishes of greedy corporations that have run the show for the previous eight years. The choice for Republicans to make now is whether to get behind the President or to completely fall by the wayside as we begin to fix our economy and our nation.

Obama Prepares To Submit His First Budget

President Obama is on a roll. After signing the stimulus bill into law last week along with an initial health care plan, this week he hit a grand slam with his joint address to Congress and to cap things off, he's preparing to submit his first budget to them. While it comes close to $4 trillion dollars, it is a progressive blueprint to lead our country out of the mess the last eight years has left us in.

You Think Our Health Care System Is Bad Now?

Just wait till until you read the figures from Bush's budget request. According to him, the private health care industry doesn't suck enough money and life out of us, so George wants to pull more money out of the budget for health care in America. Despite proposing the highest budget ever at $3.1 trillion (with a T) dollars, the CDC, Medicare and Medicaid are looking at cuts in the billions of dollars, even though they are already seriously underfunded.

From Reuters:

Bush's $3.1 trillion spending plan proposes a 7 percent cut in funds for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as less money for Medicare and Medicaid -- the joint federal-state health insurance programs for the poor and elderly.

The budget for the fiscal year starting October 1, 2009 would reduce spending on Medicare by $12.8 billion and lower federal funds for Medicaid by $18.2 billion over five years.

The National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration would receive more funds, but critics said the increases were too small to counteract rising costs.

And on top of that, even some private companies are concerned because many drug treatments come from government-funded research. A breeding farm of sorts provided by Uncle Sam is used by the for-profits to lure these successful scientists out to the private sector.

More importantly, Americans across the board will suffer from these cuts, something Congress MUST stand up against and prevent, for the good of the people. This budget fight will show who's side they're on.

The Three Trillion Dollar Road To Hell

When I was a kid and introduced to the Wizard of Oz, the yellow brick road amused me to no end....when I was four. Now George Bush literally wants to pave our way into the depths of perdition by wasting our resources, our military and domestic programs that help make us strong. For the first time ever, the requested national budget from the President is over three trillion dollars.

From RawStory:

The 2009 spending plan sent to Congress on Monday will project huge budget deficits, around $400 billion for this year and next and more than double the 2007 deficit of $163 billion. But even those estimates could prove too low given the rapidly weakening economy and the total costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bush does not include in his request for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

Last year, when Democrats were newly in the majority, there were drawn-out veto struggles. This year's fights could be worse because it is an election year.

As in past years, Bush's biggest proposed increases are in national security. Defense spending is projected to rise by about 7 percent to $515 billion and homeland security money by almost 11 percent, with a big gain for border security. Details on the budget were obtained through interviews with administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity until the budget's release.

The bulk of government programs for which Congress sets annual spending levels would remain essentially frozen at current levels. The president does shower extra money on some favored programs in education and to bolster inspections of imported food.

Bush's spending proposal would achieve sizable savings by slowing the growth in the major health programs — Medicare for retirees and Medicaid for the poor. There the president will be asking for almost $200 billion in cuts over five years, about three times the savings he proposed last year.

"Achieve sizable savings by slowing the growth in the major health programs....." That line is truly haunting. Instead of saving money by ending the war or keeping military projects within the Pentagon in place of ridiculously expensive contracts, we will be starving those most in need while continuing to sell our future away with a massive amount of debt.

If Bush is looking for a legacy, I believe 'death and destruction of country' already found him.

Pennywise And Tons Foolish

Have you heard that George Bush and the White House want to charge anyone (including lawmakers) $200 a piece to read a hard copy of his proposed budget? The Administration claims that they want to save money on printing...and laughably to save trees. Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-NC) framed it perfectly, “It’s pennywise and pound-foolish....” Well Bob you are on the right track, but even a Ben Franklin quote doesn't sum up the ridiculousness of this move.

From RawStory:

The Office of Management Budget will post the president's budget online at www.budget.gov and forego distributing 3,000 hard copies to lawmakers and federal agencies. The administration says its decision was meant to cut unnecessary spending and reduce wasted paper.

"This is a good business decision. ... It puts the focus on going green. It makes logical sense," Karen Evans, who is in charge of government technology issues at the OMB, told the Washington Post.

The environmental impact of charging for printed budgets remains to be seen, but Evans estimated it will save OMB $1 million over the next five years. The budget is generally about 2,200 pages long, so if every copy that normally was handed out for free was not printed, about 6.6 million sheets of paper would be saved. According to rough statistics compiled by ConservaTree that would save about 800 trees. Nearly 4 billion trees are harvested for paper around the globe every year.

Hmm, 800 versus 4,000,000,000. Bush's policies advocate for keeping healthy clear cutting forests but now he wants to save a few and even $200,000 a year in printing costs. You could save $ 2 million in a matter of moments if you just stopped funding the war. Imagine how many hundreds of millions of dollars we'd save over five years.

At least this brings about one moment of bipartisanship, both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill thinks that this idea is a waste of time. Pound foolish indeed.