'Budget Makes the Wrong Choices,' Spratt Says

"The Bush Administration inherited a budget that was $236 billion in surplus the year before it took office. By 2002, it had run through that surplus, and in every year since, it has racked up record deficits and a mountain of debt. His new budget calls for more of the same: more deficits, more debt, and more denial.

"The budget deficit for this year will hit an all-time high, $423 billion. The Bush Administration admits to presiding over the five largest deficits in the nation's history, but predicts a $240 billion turn-around by 2010. This allows the Administration to assert that it will cut the 2004 deficit by half over five fiscal years. But that claim -- questionable at best -- is short-lived due to the renewal of tax cuts passed since 2001. The Bush Administration's projections of the budget run out only five years, stopping conveniently in 2011. This masks the full effect of renewing the tax cuts, as does the omission of any fix in the alternative minimum tax after 2006. If the Bush tax cut agenda is enacted, the revenue loss over ten years is $1.8 trillion. If, in addition, the 2006 patch in the AMT is extended, the revenue impact over ten years is an additional $844 billion.

"In 2001, the Bush Administration assured Congress that if its tax cuts and other policies were adopted, there would be no need to increase the debt ceiling until 2008. The next year, the Administration came back to Congress and asked for a hike in the debt ceiling and Congress enacted an increase of $450 billion. The Treasury has now come back to Congress for its fourth increase in the debt ceiling since 2002. When passed, the increase now pending before the Congress will raise the ceiling by more than $3 trillion since 2002.

"In the face of such facts, it is hard to accept the Bush Administration's assertion that progress is being made. As one pores over this budget, it becomes clear that its claims rest on shaky grounds. The budget omits, for example, the full cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and as mentioned above, the full cost of repairing the AMT. A realistic accounting shows that this Administration's budgets will only take us farther down the road of massive deficits and mounting debt.

"The budget shows that there is less than meets the eye to some of the Administration's high-profile claims. Despite recent Administration statements about providing affordable health care for Americans, this budget includes increases in Medicare premiums, cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, and a misguided plan for health savings plans that will shift more of the cost of health care onto individual consumers. Meanwhile, more than three-fourths of the Administration's claimed funding for the American Competitiveness Initiative is simply the extension of an existing tax credit, while funding for the National Institutes of Health is frozen at last year's level.

"A budget is a statement of moral choices, and this budget makes the wrong choices, cutting education, Medicare and Medicaid and barely funding the bold initiatives that the President set out in his State of the Union. Its greatest moral fault is that it leaves our children a legacy of debt and an even heavier burden to bear as the baby boomers begin to retire."