“Bush Plan Reins in Domestic Spending” — Washington Post
“Bush budget to cut aid to Mich.” — Detroit News
“Bush budget puts pinch on domestic spending” — Boston Globe
Reality check:
Every year the headlines speak of budget cuts, and every year the federal budget rises. As I wrote two years ago:
There’s a conspiracy afoot to convince American taxpayers that President Bush has submitted a lean, mean budget for Fiscal Year 2006. The funny thing is, Democrats and Republicans are both in on it, and journalists are going along. A reality check is in order.…
Democrats, Republicans, and journalists mostly agree that President Bush has submitted a lean, tight $2.57 trillion budget. Why? I think we have what dancers call a pas de deux going on here. Or maybe in honor of our Texas president and his aversion to all things French, we should just call it a Texas Two-Step: The president pretends to cut the budget, and Democrats pretend to believe him.
Both sets of politicians appeal to their bases that way. President Bush’s voters want to hear that he’s cutting the budget and saving tax dollars. The Democrats’ base of government employees and federal grant recipients want to see Democratic senators fighting budget cuts. When Kennedy and Clinton denounce Bush’s “devastating” budget cuts, their supporters become outraged at Bush. Meanwhile, Republican voters respond to such charges by becoming more supportive of Bush. They may have had some doubts about Bush’s commitment to fiscal conservatism, but the denunciations from Pelosi and her colleagues assuage those doubts.
Spending under President Bush has risen from $1.863 trillion in fiscal 2001 to a proposed $2.901 trillion in fiscal 2008. Not since Lyndon Johnson have we seen such rapid spending increases. But most of the responses to any new budget come from special interest groups–local governments, chiefs of police, Sallie Mae, AARP, veterans, environmentalists, health care providers, subsidized farmers–and they help to shape the perception that the budget is chopping programs.
Taxpayers would be better served if newspapers would run a nice clean graph–like the one above–with every budget story.
