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| Contributor | ArmyDem |
| Last Edited | ArmyDem Jan 28, 2006 12:01pm |
| Category | General |
| News Date | Jan 22, 2006 12:00pm |
| Description | With the next budget he sends to Congress, Bush wants to remake himself as a fiscal disciplinarian. Will anyone believe him?
By MATTHEW COOPER, MIKE ALLEN
Posted Sunday, Jan. 22, 2006
The White House's Roosevelt Room is wired for PowerPoint presentations, and most officials also bring handouts when they brief George W. Bush and his inner circle. But Budget Director Josh Bolten, who has spent months walking the President through a problem that could dramatically affect his legacy, sticks to colorful charts on old-fashioned easels. The lights stay on, so nobody dozes off, and there's no paper to wander through. It's dense material, after all. "I keep everyone's attention focused on what I want them to focus on," Bolten said.
The President will need all the colorful charts he can muster. After five years of tax cuts and massive spending that brought back deficits and ensured that they will continue for years if not decades, Bush plans to use his State of the Union address on Jan. 31 to portray himself as, well, thrifty. He will talk about the need to rein in programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, and he'll tout the modest budget cuts that Congress passed at his request last year.
[snip]
But Bush himself has a huge credibility problem. The $236 billion Clinton surplus of 2000 has become a $400 billion annual deficit. Setting aside Social Security, about a quarter of what the government has spent since Bush became President has been borrowed. And estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that if his tax cuts are made permanent--as he is advocating--deficits will persist for at least 10 years. |
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