Bush’s budget: government by fraud and lies

By Patrick Martin
9 February 2005
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The most important feature of the new budget released by the Bush administration on Monday is that it is not, in any serious sense of the word, a budget at all. It is a monumental fraud, aimed at concealing fiscal reality and usurping decisions on spending that, under longstanding US constitutional procedures, are reserved to Congress rather than the executive branch.
Many of the most expensive and politically contentious initiatives of the Bush administration are simply left out of the budget. By one estimate, the omitted costs come to $4 trillion over 10 years, an amount equal to about one-and-a-half year’s spending at the current rate of $2.5 trillion a year.
There is no funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, although the costs are estimated at $5 billion a month even if the US troop presence in Iraq is reduced to 120,000 next year.
White House budget director Joshua Bolten admitted that the war would involve major costs, but added, “It wouldn’t be responsible for us to take a guess at what those costs are.” (This argument apparently does not apply to the campaign for Social Security privatization, which Bush has sought to motivate through implausible and tendentious projections about the state of the system’s finances 75 years from now).
The Bush administration has consistently refused to incorporate spending for its war policies into the regular budget, instead making use of supplemental appropriations bills rammed through Congress with demagogy about the need to “support our troops.” The purpose has been to distance the social cuts imposed by the administration from the cost of its wars, and thus conceal their essential connection: millions are being cut off food stamps, student loans or health insurance to finance American military aggression.
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