President Bush’s 2008 budget hit the Hill yesterday to a frosty reception (so much for global warming). The budget is like having an accountant hold a mirror up to American society, and that society is simultaneously warlike and childish.
Almost half of your income taxes will be spent on national defense, and that doesn’t include the interest on debt from previous defense overspending. The Pentagon will spend 6% of its budget repairing and replacing equipment (mostly for Iraq), but it’s still more than the entire foreign affairs budget for 2008. Diplomacy from the barrel of a recently-repaired gun.
The budget also reveals that we are spending money like spoiled trust fund kids – but without the trust fund. Paying for the $261 billion in interest payments on our past indulgences takes up most (83%) of the revenue collected from corporate taxes. Lest you think that we should cut taxes to spur the economy, may I remind you that tax cuts still don’t pay for themselves no matter how many times Bush insists that they do. In fact, between 2008 and 2012, the Bush tax cuts will cost the Treasury Department more than one year of unemployment and welfare benefits combined.
Gift and inheritance taxes collect enough revenue to pay for nearly all of our national science and technology budget. So if you actually are a trust fund kid and think that so-called death taxes are unjust, consider that they might help keep grandma alive for a few more years. Or was that the point of cutting them?
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Source: Washington Post
