Finding More Bogus “Cuts” in Bush’s Latest Budget
 

     Tuesday’s lead story by Washington reporter David Sanger, “Bush Budget Plan For $2.77 Trillion Stresses Security -- Domestic Cuts Pose Tough Choices for Republican Lawmakers,” continues the paper’s annual pattern of presenting tentative reductions in spending increases as harsh budget “cuts,” while obsessing over Bush’s insistence on renewing the tax cuts that he campaigned on.

      “President Bush proposed a $2.77 trillion budget on Monday calling for increased spending on the military and domestic security and substantial cuts in domestic programs as disparate as education, farm subsidies and the national parks. The budget bears all the hallmarks of the Bush presidency: his overriding priorities are national security and making permanent the tax cuts passed by Congress in recent years. But it is unclear how much appetite Congress will have in a critical midterm election year for further spending cuts, including a new formula Mr. Bush is proposing to limit the growth in Medicare spending, at a savings of $36 billion over the next five years.

     “The budget will pose particularly agonizing choices for the Republican majority. Republicans are caught between pressure from conservatives to make real headway in limiting the size and role of the federal government, and the political reality that votes to cut programs that touch the lives of millions of people could make them vulnerable to Democratic attacks in the fall.”

     Sanger insists Republicans may flinch: “The budget is chockablock with proposals that could give Republicans pause, like one to scale back programs that help the poor insulate their homes.”

     Like his colleague Robin Toner, Sanger implies that a “compassionate conservative” is one who spends even more federal money on domestic initiatives than Bush is proposing: “Mr. Bush's budget shows the tension between his promise, since he began seeking the presidency, to act as a ‘compassionate conservative’ and the fiscal pressures created by his tax cuts and support for more spending on national security.”

     But the actual spending details don’t seem all that scary: “A reduction in spending on all other annually appropriated domestic programs of $2.2 billion, or one-half of 1 percent, to $398.3 billion.”

     Sanger argues: “New figures issued Monday by Mr. Bush's budget director, Joshua B. Bolten, showed that the huge deficits that have returned since Mr. Bush took office were partly offset last year by what Mr. Bolten called a ‘remarkable’ $274 billion increase in federal tax receipts. Almost all of that was the result of stronger-than-expected economic growth, which Mr. Bolten said could be directly attributed to the tax cuts -- a supply-side argument many of the administration's critics reject.”

     Sanger takes Democratic anti-supply side talking points as fact: “Democratic leaders said a far bigger factor was tax cuts, which become far more costly after Mr. Bush leaves office and provide most of their benefits to upper-income people.”

     The MRC’s Brent Baker pointed out the inaccurate headline accompanying the early, online edition of Sanger’s article (“Bush's $2.77 Trillion Budget Plan Calls for Medicare Cuts.”)

     Baker shot back with a Heritage Foundation study by Brian Reidl demonstrating that “Spending increased by 8% in 2005 and is up 33% overall since 2001” and that spending on anti-poverty programs, including food stamps and child nutrition have risen 39% during the Bush years. Yet the media (the Times included) frets about bogus “cuts” in spending.

For the rest of Sanger on Bush’s new budget, click here.

“Pain for Little Gain” from Bush’s Spending “Cuts”?
 

     Robin Toner’s Tuesday “news analysis” on Bush’s $2.77 trillion budget request is titled “Holding Fast to a Policy of Tax Cutting.”

     Like her colleague David Sanger, Toner implies that the Times’ definition of a “compassionate conservative” is one who spends even more on domestic programs than Bush is proposing.

     “George W. Bush ran for office as a ‘compassionate conservative,’ arguing that Americans did not have to choose between huge tax cuts and a government that would do its part to address social needs like education and health care. Now into his sixth year in the White House, Mr. Bush offered a budget on Monday that showed more clearly than ever the inexorable limits of that political promise.

     “Mr. Bush is asking Congress, first and foremost, to make his tax cuts permanent and to increase spending on national security, while looking for savings in popular domestic programs like Medicare and vocational education. The tradeoffs, to his critics, are achingly clear, and unfair.

     Toner doesn’t talk about liberal critics, only Democrats. But by contrast, she manages to find “conservatives.”

     “Mr. Bush has never fit easily into any category when it comes to his philosophy of government. He has been called a big-government conservative, a supply-sider and, by conservatives who despair of his unwillingness to get even tougher on domestic spending, a spendthrift.

     “To many Democrats, he appears intent on extending and expanding his tax cuts precisely to create the situation the government faces now, leaving it to choose between tolerating large deficits or cutting into domestic programs in a way that begins to alter the social contract.

     “Mr. Bush's budget began an ideologically charged debate in a midterm election year, with his party's control of Congress at stake. Democrats said Mr. Bush was proposing spending reductions that went well beyond fat to preserve his tax cuts for the affluent.”

     Toner harps on the tax cuts some more, taking the liberal idea of tax cuts as a drain on the federal treasury: “Still, the new budget underscores the consistent and paramount importance of tax cuts in the Bush philosophy. His first term cuts affected more money than any other initiative undertaken in his presidency, including the costs thus far of the war in Iraq. All told, including tax incentives for health care programs and the extension of other tax breaks that are likely to be taken up by Congress, the White House budget calls for nearly $300 billion in tax cuts over the next five years, and $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years.

     Toner takes issue with the conservative supply-side argument that lower tax rates can result in economic growth without greatly lowering tax revenues: “Most of that lost revenue would be the result of extending Mr. Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which reduced the income tax rates, offered generous new breaks to families and businesses, and slashed taxes on investment income. Democrats assert that the country simply cannot afford extending all those tax cuts, especially since their benefits would go largely to upper income people.”

      Toner’s tone demonstrates just how hard it is to cut spending in Washington: “Mr. Bush proposed an array of savings in domestic programs, including big reductions or cuts in 141 programs. Critics asserted those reductions would do little to ease the deficit even as they imposed real hardship on some people, constituting pain for little gain.”

For more of Toner’s budget analysis, click here.

Mohammed Cartoon Update: The Times (Sort of) Defends Free Speech
 

     After its failure to defend free speech in a Sunday news report, the Times recovers, if only slightly, in its Tuesday editorial, “Those Danish Cartoons.”

     Although the Times didn’t join the Philadelphia Inquirer in actually publishing the most controversial cartoon (Mohammad with a bomb for a turban), its tentative stand for free speech is nonetheless braver than the editorial page of the NYT Co.’s subsidiary paper, The Boston Globe.

     In a Saturday editorial, “Forms of Intolerance,” the Globe made this grossly unfair comparison: “Depicting Mohammed wearing a turban in the form of a bomb with a sputtering fuse is no less hurtful to most Muslims than Nazi caricatures of Jews or Ku Klux Klan caricatures of blacks are to those victims of intolerance. That is why the Danish cartoons will not be reproduced on these pages.”

     The Times, by contrast, brings up the First Amendment, albeit in a humdrum fashion: “The pictures, one of which showed the prophet with a bomb on top of his head in place of a turban, violate a common belief among Muslims that any depiction of Muhammad is sacrilege. The paper that first published them did so as an experiment to see whether political satirists were capable of being as harsh to Islam as they are to other organized religions. If that sounds juvenile, Americans still recognize it as within the speech protected by our First Amendment.

     The New York Times and much of the rest of the nation's news media have reported on the cartoons but refrained from showing them. That seems a reasonable choice for news organizations that usually refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols, especially since the cartoons are so easy to describe in words.”

     The Times didn’t mention whether its decision was also affected by the threat of protests similar to those visited upon the Philadelphia Inquirer.

     Journalist Michael Petrelis, for one, isn’t impressed with the Times’ failure to run the cartoons.

For the full Times editorial, click here.