Fantasy Budget

Robin Toner writes in the New York Times: "George W. Bush ran for office as a 'compassionate conservative,' arguing that Americans did not have to choose between huge tax cuts and a government that would do its part to address social needs like education and health care.

"Now into his sixth year in the White House, Mr. Bush offered a budget on Monday that showed more clearly than ever the inexorable limits of that political promise."

The above-mentioned Stan Collender writes in his National Journal column (subscription required): "President Bush's fiscal 2007 budget is far more likely to be the fiscal equivalent of a tree falling in the woods when there is no one there to hear it than a sonic boom in an urban area."

After explaining why so many provisions are politically dead on arrival, Collender asks: "Why would the White House send Congress a 2007 budget that includes so much that won't happen?

"First, and most important, President Bush has put together a political platform for the year that appeals to core constituencies. . . .

"Second, unrealistic proposals allow the White House to say that it is on target to cut the deficit in half by the end of 2009."

He concludes: "The question, therefore, is not whether the Bush 2007 budget makes any noise if it falls in the woods. The real question is whether it will make any noise now that it has already fallen."

The Washington Post editorial board writes that Bush deserves credit for proposing modest steps to restrain Medicare's growth -- but only in the context of "the folly and unfairness of pressing to extend tax cuts in this fiscal environment and to expand tax-preferred savings vehicles that benefit the wealthy; the dishonesty of once again excluding known costs for things such as paying for the war in Iraq after 2007 and giving middle-income taxpayers relief from the alternative minimum tax; and the increasingly cruel squeeze on programs for low-income Americans."

The New York Times editorial board writes: "President Bush's $2.77 trillion budget is fiction masquerading as fact, a governmental version of the made-up memoirs that have been denounced up and down the continent lately.

Nuts and Bolts

Here is the proposed budget, from the White House.

Amy Goldstein writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush yesterday proposed a $2.77 trillion spending plan for the coming year that drains money from two-thirds of federal agencies, continues a large military buildup and predicts that the federal deficit this year will far eclipse the previous record, reaching $423 billion.

"In the White House budget for the fiscal year ending in October 2007, Pentagon funding would increase by nearly 7 percent and, for the first time in Bush's presidency, claim more than half the government's expenditure on discretionary programs, those that get set each year. The $439.3 billion that the plan devotes to the military is 45 percent greater than the Pentagon budget when Bush took office five years ago."