Bush submits 2008 budget to Congress
February 5, 2007
The new budget submitted by US President George W. Bush to Congress on Monday, calling for $2.9 trillion in total spending, includes nearly $700 billion in military spending. Most of that $700 billion will go to military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. The budget, for the fiscal year beginning 1 October 2008, will result in a budget surplus by the year 2012, according to the Bush administration.
The new budget calls for extension of the tax cuts first introduced in Mr. Bush’s first term, which will reduce revenues by an estimated $1.6 trillion over 10 years. It also either cuts or eliminates 141 programs, according to a report from CNN. Some of those cuts will come in the form of $78 billion of savings in Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare provides insurance to retirees and the disabled, while Medicaid is a health program for children and the disadvantaged. $168 million will be spent to increase strategic oil inventories.
This is the first budget that Mr. Bush has had to submit to a Democratic-controlled Congress, and there is little chance that the budget will stand as submitted. Both Democrats and Republicans were quoted as saying that it will be difficult for the budget to gain support in its present form. The chairman of the Senate Budget committee, Kent Conrad, a Democrat, said that the budget was “disconnected from reality”. Conrad did say that this budget does better at accounting for near-term costs of the war in Iraq, although he criticized its accounting of the full costs of the war and that while it assumes cuts in domestic programs past 2008 it does not say where the cuts will come from after that year.