With his new budget, George W. Bush shows us how to destroy a great power, by failing to invest in the nation's infrastructure while overextending the "empire" and pouring everything into the military. For a lot more on this theme, read the classic book by Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000. Or, if you want a really short version, you can start by reading Sen. Webb's press release below.
The President's proposed budget for fiscal year 2009 flat-lines domestic programs at a time when we most need significant investment in our nation's economy. Not since the nexus of World War II and the Great Depression has the country been faced with such serious hurdles from both an economic and foreign policy perspective.What I find most disturbing about the President's proposal is that it fails to fund our seriously decaying infrastructure programs at the same time that it hides the true cost of the war from the American people. Without full transparency after more than six years of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is impossible for the American people to make a full accounting of our financial commitment there. Further, the costs of war have brought us to a period of deficit spending without addressing the challenges here at home.
The question that I keep asking myself is this: when historians look back at this period 100 years from now, will they ask, "How did the United States allow itself to be led so badly astray by George W. Bush and, in the end, seal its fate?" Let's hope that isn't the case, but Bush is pretty much a textbook case of everything NOT to do, in pretty much every area, if you want your country to prosper over the long haul.
P.S. This is great, "Bush Budget Would Bring Record Deficits." I mean, this is insanity:
The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.
Actually, it's worse than "insanity," it's the logical culmination of the entire "shrink government to the size where you can drown it in the bathtub" brand of conservativism that has taken over the once-proud, now disgraced, Republican Party.
*"The budget includes no funding to state and local governments for jailing illegal immigrants convicted of crimes."
*"The president's budget would reduce funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program by 22% to $2 billion, according to Mark Wolfe, executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors' Assn., who said the impact on low-income households would be 'severe.'"
*"Medicare, which serves about 44 million seniors and disabled people, would be squeezed by $178 billion over five years...Hospitals and other providers in traditional Medicare would face the sharpest cuts, and private health insurance plans that now constitute one of the fastest-growing parts of the program would get only a light trim, critics said."
*"The president also called for reductions totaling $17 billion over five years in Medicaid, a federal-state partnership that serves some 55 million people, including the poor and many elderly nursing home residents."
*"The Pentagon is the only department for which Bush proposes a significant increase; its budget would grow 7.5% to $515 billion."
We should have impeached this Son of a Bush.