A Republican president today proposed a record-setting budget of $3.1 trillion:
WASHINGTON – President Bush sent the nation’s first-ever $3 trillion budget proposal to Congress on Monday, contending that the spending blueprint will fulfill his chief responsibility to keep America safe.
ADVERTISEMENTThe $3.1 trillion proposed budget projects sizable increases in national security but forces the rest of government to pinch pennies. It seeks $196 billion in savings over five years in the government’s giant health care programs — Medicare and Medicaid.
But even with those restraints, the budget projects the deficits will soar to near-record levels of $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, driven higher in part by efforts to revive the sagging economy with a $145 billion stimulus package.
Granted, we have a war on terror to support, but still, a good Republican president would have left office with total government spending as a percentage of GDP nearly unchanged. Ryan Ellis of American Shareholders Association says that for a Republican president to grow the size of government, as an opening bid in his last year of office, is not a good harbinger of where we’ll end up.
If a Republican president thinks its fine to grow government, just think how much the two Dem frontrunners will grow government. Another worry of mine is that people are growing accustomed to the idea of government entitlements. People have no conception of what three trillion is like. The number is hard to put into any sort of meaningful context. This is a dangerous situation when we’re talking about your, mine, and our money because I feel it gives the false impression that money is no object. Tim over at The Mess Greenspan Made says, “[N]o one really has any concept of just how big a number that is and, therefore, no one really seems to know or care if it is too big, too small, or just right.”
The fact that people might not care whether $3.1 trillion is too big, small, or just right is a scary prospect.
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