President Bush’s proposed $2.77 trillion budget for fiscal year 2007 fails to underwrite the intellectual and physical infrastructure America needs to master the challenges of global competition in the 21st century. It also sacrifices even the pretense of a balanced budget on the altar of tax cuts for the rich.
In his State of the Union address, the president called for ending “our addiction to oil.” But as analyst Robert Borosage noted, “there’s no 12-step program in his budget” to end that addiction. Instead of major outlays to develop alternative energy sources, Bush actually calls for reducing Department of Energy spending by 1.8 percent. The cuts include funding for energy efficiency and research on hydropower and geothermal energy.
The same sad story is repeated on the education front. Bush proposed cuts in key research activities, including the National Institutes of Health. Sizable trims were also aimed at funds for vocational training, parent-resource centers and drug-free schools. The president also proposed freezing Pell Grants to college students for the fifth year and – in the face of rising college tuitions – making student loans more expensive.
The net effect of Bush’s budget blueprint is that America will continue disinvesting in basic research on critical technologies like alternative energy while shortchanging the skills of our future work force – the falsest of economies. Worse, the cutbacks won’t reduce the federal deficit, which is projected to reach a record $423 billion this year. The president’s five-year projections do show the deficit dropping after 2008, but the assumptions behind the rosy scenario are absurd – including the notion that the war in Iraq will cost U.S. taxpayers nothing after 2007.
Bush does offer a few good ideas, including a $4.9 billion cut in farm subsidies over five years, mostly by lowering the current $360,000 cap on annual payments to a single agricultural producer to $250,000. But such modest economies evaporate like an ice cube in a blast furnace when faced by tax-cut extensions the president is seeking – priced at a breathtaking $1.4 trillion over 10 years.
Bush’s huge tax cuts and increases in military spending cannot be offset by cuts to the research and education upon which America’s future depends. If the overall level of spending proposed by Bush is necessary, we think Americans will want to pay as we go – rather than passing the costs on to future generations by increasing the federal deficit.
