Jewish World Review Feb. 8, 2005 / 29 Shevat, 5765

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Why liberals will still criticize President Bush for this budget


http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | Put on your wayfarers and pull out your St. Elmo's Fire soundtrack. It's time to get ready for a flashback to the 80s.

Today, George W. Bush will release his first moderately conservative budget since taking office four years ago. Actually, it is a fiscal blueprint that gives many a reason to hope that someone in Washington is finally facing up to the music.

And that music is as bad as the soundtrack to Rob Lowe's last major film performance of the 80s — unless you count the ones where he taped himself in bed.

Over the past four years, the deficit has shot up to $427 billion per year. The overall accumulated debt is approaching $8 trillion. And this is despite the fact that when I left Congress in 2001, the United States had a $150 billion surplus for that year alone.

As I wrote in my book last fall, Congress and the president went on a domestic and military spending spree of unprecedented proportions. By the end of last year, the president's own budget office admitted that the debt would increase by $9 trillion over the next ten years. This is very bad news for a rapidly aging population that will not get their Social Security and Medicare benefits in full if both parties don't start acting more responsibly.

I guess that's the path the president decided to go down with the budget released this morning. I say "I guess" because we have not seen this kind of restrained behavior from anyone outside of John McCain and a few House members over the past four years. So it is too early to talk about trends.

Still, one trend you can count on is the press blasting the Republican president as heartless, cruel, and committed to killing seniors, kiddies, and young furry animals with his ruthless budget cuts.

I have seen it all before and like before, it is a joke.

Spending in Washington has exploded at such rapid rates that even slowing it down to a 3 percent increase in 2005 will produce a budget that costs taxpayers $2.5 trillion this year alone.

That's right. $2,500,000,000,000.00.

And yet reporters of all stripes (wildly liberal, moderately liberal, and mildly liberal) will bash this budget as the work of the American Anti-christ.

Film crews will run to granny and ask her how she feels now that Mr. Bush seems hell-bent on throwing her out in the street.

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Viewers will see pictures of young, sweet babies and learn from an earnest, and yet quite dizzy blond that these little children will be left out in the cold with no medical care because of massive cuts in Medicaid.

And those poor farmers. They'll find the one guy who had a bad year last year and ask him what he thinks about the president slashing farm subsidies. And since the news ditz picked the farmer, you can be sure he will tell the world that he voted for George Bush in 2004, but boy, if he could only have that vote back now.

It's all intended to discredit the president, cast doubt on the election's validity, and to reinforce false stereotypes.

And as with Ronald Reagan, it won't work.

Speaking of stereos, I think it's time to take out my record player and slap on a 45 of "Tainted Love." It's starting to feel like 1982 all over again.

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Former Congressman Joe Scarborough (R-Fla.) hosts “Scarborough Country,” 10 p.m. ET, weeknights on MSNBC. He is the author of the recently published "Rome Wasn't Burnt in a Day : The Real Deal on How Politicians, Bureaucrats, and Other Washington Barbarians are Bankrupting America". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)Comment by clicking here.


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