Thread: '07 Shaping Up as Lean Budget

Long way to go and it is an election year, but figure Fed hiring to be lean and slow still.

'07 budget is austere
Joel Havemann, Janet Hook - Los Angeles Times
Sunday, January 22, 2006

Washington --- Pinned between the cost of the Iraq war and the size of the federal deficit, President Bush is preparing an austere budget for next year without bold plans like his moribund Social Security overhaul and with little room for even modest spending initiatives.

Instead, the budget embodies an attempt to hold nondefense spending at or below current levels.

But the Republican-controlled Congress has rejected many of the kinds of fiscal restraints Bush is expected to propose, raising the prospect of a year of trench warfare --- a protracted struggle between the White House and Capitol Hill over relatively small budgetary gains and losses.

In particular, the president will ask Congress to trim the growth of federal benefit programs. When Bush proposed many of the same savings targets in this year's budget, however, including agricultural subsidies and Medicaid payments, Congress omitted them from the package of spending cuts that still awaits final action in the House.

And both the deficit problem and the difficulty of forging agreement on budget curbs probably will grow more acute this year.

Even if no new spending pressures develop, the White House is expected to ask Congress for three major supplemental appropriations bills in addition to the funding requests in the regular budget --- one for the continued fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, a second for the federal government's share of recovery from Hurricane Katrina, and a third for Bush's plans for meeting the threat of an avian flu epidemic.

The few spending increases Bush is expected to endorse --- such as more support for science and technology education --- will be relatively modest.

What Bush does not plan to pull back on is his demand for continuing tax cuts. He will renew his call for making permanent the array of reductions enacted in 2001 and 2003, which are scheduled to expire in coming years.

"To keep our economy growing and our small-business sector strong," Bush said in his Saturday radio address to the nation, "we need to ensure that you keep more of what you earn --- so Congress needs to make the tax cuts permanent."

But the president's critics blame the tax cuts for the fact that record budget surpluses before he entered the White House have given way to record deficits.

Second-term presidents often face constraints on spending and policy initiatives. Political capital tends to erode over time, and unexpected events force changes in bold designs.

Traditionally, chief executives respond by pressing for modest but symbolic measures that they can portray as important steps toward large, politically popular goals.

For Bush, though, such a strategy might prove harder to implement. Fiscally conservative Republicans are wary of any new government spending at a time of near-record budget deficits. And when people find their own finances squeezed, as many do now, they are less likely to favor members of Congress who are generous with public funds.

Bush is scheduled to present his 2007 budget to Congress on Feb. 6.

As a lame duck president I don't expect 43 to get anything he wants through the House or Senate. Without Tom DeLay ramrodding by threat, bribe, and blackmail, 43 has lost any control he once had over the Congress. Interesting that a Republican president can't get his way with a Republican controlled Congress. I guess that too many of them are more concerned with getting reelected, subpoenaed, indicted than with implementing a GOP master plan. It is shaping up to be an interesting year on the hill, entertaining to say the least.

Good point you make, also add though, in the last 5 yrs I dont think he has vetoed anything. That has to make you wonder...