Bush Submits $2.5 Trillion Budget to Congress

President Bush is expected to send a $2.5 trillion budget to Congress later today. Bush is seeking a $19 billion increase in defense spending while proposing cutbacks in a wide range of domestic programs. Faced with a record deficit, Bush is calling for the elimination of some 150 governmental programs. One out of every three of the targeted programs concerns education. Public housing residents, Medicaid recipients and farmers will all suffer from cutbacks. In addition Bush is proposing to cut the budget of the Environmental Protection Agency by $450 million; to cut $100 million from a Bureau of Indian Affairs program that helps build schools and to cut $200 million for home-heating aid for the poor. Meanwhile Bush is calling for the Pentagon's budget to increase by nearly 5 percent to $419 billion. However that total does not include the cost of the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

From Democracy Now!, today. I thought farmers were the one's W's Social Security rhetoric was making him out to save? And not only are we leaving more children behind, but making sure they don't get health care or heat in their homes this winter. The one up-side is the expanding military budget, and with our society becoming astronomically more militarist and oriented around production of weapons technology, that means job security! Whew!

-Christian