IRAQ WAR: $300 Billion and counting…
07 February 2006 11:02 am by Taylor Marsh
IRAQ WAR: $300 Billion and counting…
 |
| … with Iraq costs now at $300B |
When the estimated cost of the Iraq war
soared beyond $300 billion yesterday, White House officials said there were
no regrets about humiliating two top aides who had accurately predicted the
war's cost. Retired Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki and White House economic
adviser Larry Lindsey had pegged the cost of the war at $200 billion. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said it would cost only $50 billion. Lindsey was fired
and Shinseki was shunted aside.
Team
Bush Shrugs Off 300B War Cost
(via
Steve Clemons)
Have you heard much about the budget on the blogs? Well, besides
blowing the roof off… wait a minute… The roof's already off, so I guess
the analogy would be that Bush is now blowing up the ground on which we all
stand and which our children are to inherit. It's truly incomprehensible, especially
since it does nothing for the deficit, let alone deal with the whopping Iraq
sinkhole. The kind of math Bush uses in his “budget” even I could
demolish. The New York Times weighs in with “A
Trilliion Little Pieces.”
President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget
is fiction masquerading as fact, a governmental version of the made-up memoirs
that have been denounced up and down the continent lately. The spending proposal
is built around the pretense that the same House and Senate that are set to
consider a record deficit of $423 billion will now impose a virtual freeze on
everything other than Pentagon and homeland security outlays. The budget writers
even fantasized an end to Social Security's lump-sum death benefit — a
whopping $255 per recipient — as if Congress would dare to do something
so heartless and easy to exploit in an election year.
The DSCC has come up with a beauty
of a list on Bush's budget. Read it and smell the Republican flop sweat.
Independent Budget Analyst: “Budget
Is Not Going to Happen.” Stanley E. Collender, a federal
budget analyst at Financial Dynamics Business Communications, said, “This
budget is not going to happen. Of all the budgets I've seen recently, this is
the one going nowhere the fastest.” [Washington
Post, 2/7/06]
Goldman Sachs: Deficit Forecasts
are “Unrealistic.” Bush's budget proposal assumes
that the federal deficit “would jump from $318 billion last year to $423
billion in 2006, then slide back down to $183 billion in 2010… Those factors
led Goldman Sachs economists to tell clients yesterday that the deficit forecasts
are 'unrealistic.'” [Washington
Post, 2/7/06]
Brookings Institute: Budget
is “Delayed Reform.” Eugene Steuerle, a senior fellow
at the Brookings Institute and a former top tax official in the Reagan administration,
said, “This is a budget of delayed reform. We have these broken programs
and the proposals to fix them aren't here. They are not in the budget, and they
are not on the congressional agenda.” [Boston
Globe, 2/7/06]
Heritage Foundation: Budget
Doesn't Deal With Retirees. Brian Riedl, budget analyst for
the conservative Heritage Foundation, said that Bush's budget is “clearly
not enough to feasibly solve the most important economic challenge of our era,
how to deal with 77 million Baby Boom retirees.” [Chicago
Tribune, 2/7/06]
Concord Coalition: White House
Working Off of “Very Unrealistic Assumptions.” Robert
Bixby, Executive Director of the Concord Coalition, said of the Bush budget,
“When you look at the bottom line that they're putting out, it's important
then to look at the assumptions. And I think there are some very unrealistic
assumptions there that would probably keep the deficit much higher than the
administration is showing.” ["Nightly Business Report," 2/6/06]
AARP: Health Cuts Will Lead
to “Crisis in Quality and Access.” William D. Novelli,
executive director of AARP, said the “budget relies on cutting Medicare
and Medicaid, rather than focusing on skyrocketing costs [in] the health care
system.” He said, “Arbitrary caps on Medicare will mean that providers
or beneficiaries will have to make up the difference through lower payment rates
or higher cost-sharing. Over time, this will create a crisis in quality and
access to health care for older Americans.” [The
Buffalo News, 2/7/06]
AARP: Proposed Medicare Cuts
Will Lead to Higher Costs for Middle Class Americans. Discussing
budget proposals to increase Medicare premiums, John Rother, director of policy
and strategy at AARP, said, “If that's the proposal, that means today's
middle class will face higher and higher costs.” [AP, 2/6/06]
Farmers: Don't Balance Budget
on the Backs of Farmers and Ranchers. National Farmers Union
President Dave Frederickson said, “For the second year in a row the Administration
is proposing drastically cutting the 2002 farm bill safety net at a time when
the rural economy is struggling… it does not make sense to balance the
federal budget on the backs of farmers and ranchers, while providing more tax
cuts for the wealthiest Americans.” [NFU
release, 2/6/06]
AFL-CIO: Budget Ignore “Real
Needs of Working Families.” John Sweeney, President of
the AFL-CIO, said, “The proposed federal budget released by the president
today provides one more indication of the indifference of the Bush Administration
to the real needs of working families by cutting funds for job training, cutting
Trade Adjustment Assistance, refusing new funds to enforce job safety and mine
safety and cutting Medicare.” [AFL-CIO
Press Release, 2/6/06]
Firefighters: Budget is “Incredibly
Display of Arrogance.” International Association of Fire
Fighters General President Harold Schaitberger called the Bush Budget “an
incredible display of arrogance.” The IAFF noted a $257 million cut in
FIRE Act funding and a funding cut for SAFER, the program intended to hire more
fire fighters. Schaitberger added, “These major reductions in FIRE Act
funding come on the heels of disappointing cuts for the past two years in a
row.” [IAFF Release, 2/6/06]
American Hospital Assn: Budget Cuts Will Hurts
Patients. “Hospitals already are stretching scarce resources
to respond to the daily challenges of providing care to all who come through
our doors,” said Dick Davidson, president of the American Hospital Association.
“Cuts to these resources will have a negative impact on the availability
of care for the patients and communities we serve.” [AP,
2/7/06]
Photo credit: PropRemix
