Bush Starves the Beast

As we've guessed from the $300B-$500B deficits that the Bush administration has been racking up in the past few years, while cutting taxes for the wealthy, this cannot go on forever. When can it all end?

In 2006. Bush has told his education, HHS and homeland security departments to brace for spending cuts in 2006. He's starving the beast., as the conservatives say -- a tactic of running up massive deficits underneath a tax cut, in order to justify cutting programs the conservatives don't want.

Who's getting the cuts: Education (a $1.7B increase in 2005, for political hay during elections, followed by a $1.5B cut in 2006). Veterans Afairs ($519M increase in 2005, followed by $910M cut in 2006), and drops for the EPA, the National Science Foundation, Small Business Administration, Transportation, Social Security, and Interior Department (you know, those people who keep oil barons from drilling in ANWAR and stop clear-cut logging in Colorado).

The White House's excuse: "Those numbers are from formula, and don't reflect policy planning." Um, but the formula reflects how much money we'll have, and the reason everyone's taking a big hit is that we're not going to have the money in 2006, thanks to Bush's tax cuts. The overall decrease reflects how Bush's tax cuts are starving the government. They just won't have the money for these programs.