Cornyn Weighs in on Bush's Budget Proposal

Cornyn issued a statement regarding the release of Bush's fiscal year 2009 budget proposal that said.....very little. But read this statement.

“Now that the President has proposed his annual budget blueprint, the hard work begins in Congress to make sure we fund our priorities while holding the line on spending. The American people are increasingly tired of runaway government spending.

Tired? No argument there.

Now read this statement.

“Like every hard-working American family, the federal government has to live within a budget as well. As a member of the Budget Committee, I’ll do all I can to ensure Congress sets the necessary funding levels for critical areas such as national defense and border security. These are non-negotiable items that we cannot compromise on. “

Do you see the contradiction here? The only programs in the budget that aren't getting frozen (technically a cut, since there is no adjustment for inflation) or being reduced from last year are defense and homeland security. But Cornyn tells us that funding for those programs is non-negotiable.

President Bush unveiled a $3.1 trillion budget on Monday that supports sizable increases in military spending to fight the war on terrorism and protects his signature tax cuts.

The spending proposal, which shows the government spending $3 trillion in a 12-month period for the first time in history, squeezes most of government outside of national security, and also seeks $196 billion in savings over the next five years in the government's giant health care programs -- Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.

Even with those savings, Bush projects that the deficits, which had been declining, will soar to near-record levels, hitting $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009. The all-time high deficit in dollar terms was $413 billion in 2004.

Yes, we are tired of runaway government spending. Tired of an endless war that drains our coffers and burdens future generations with unprecedented debt. Tired of worrying about a future without the social safety nets that we earned through a lifetime of hard work. And most of all, we're tired of politicians who think we can't see through the hypocrisy of their self-serving spin to know when we're being played.

A Question of Priorities

Since I am a preacher by trade, I suppose it is not surprising that I have seven major reasons for bringing Vietnam into the field of my moral vision. There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam and I watched the program broken and eviscerated as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967

Reading over Bush's latest budget proposal, I was reminded of the historic speech the Reverend gave at Riverside Church on the Vietnam war. King understood only too well that a nation that squandered its treasure on pursuit of empire could never afford to live up to its ideals of equal opportunity. And so he fought a battle on three fronts: one for civil rights, one for economic justice and another for peace.

Bush's latest budget differs little from his previous ones. The shell game over funding for this administration's overall defense programs continues, so a true accounting is probably not possible, but defense spending is up.

The Bush budget to be submitted Monday would cut the budget for the Health and Human Services Department by $2 billion, or 3 percent. By contrast, the Pentagon would get a $35 billion increase to $515 billion for core programs, with war costs additional [emphasis added.]

When conservatives say "starve the beast," they are talking about "entitlements" like healthcare for children, not toys for the military.

In terms of fiscal priorities, this administration has been very consistent, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that Bush is proposing cuts for programs that help keep the poor and nearly poor afloat just at a time when a looming recession predicts those programs would be most needed.

Democrats can take no solace in the fact that this version of the budget won't see the light of day, because regardless of how strenuously they fight to restore targeted cuts for domestic programs, their options are limited. Seven years of uncontrolled spending on a needless war coupled with tax cuts for the wealthy have left our country facing bankruptcy.

Dr. King's haunting and prophetic words ring as true about our current military endeavors as they did about Vietnam. It's time to choose: Do we continue on the road to endless war and occupation or do we begin to rebuild our own country? Here's a primer on the crisis we face, what it will mean to future generations and what we need to do to fix it.