Conyers Asks Bush, "Did You Forget Something, Mr. President?"

Washington, DC - Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) criticized President Bush today for neglecting to budget a dime for the issues he campaigned hardest on in the 2004 election.

Conyers, who yesterday described the President's budget as "wrong-headed" and "cold-hearted," saved his harshest criticism for the President's failure to budget for his plan for sweeping Social Security reforms and the ongoing Iraq War. Conyers issued the following statement:

"The President told the American people a lot of things last fall. He made very clear his top domestic priority - his extensive overhaul of Social Security - and his top foreign priorities, the War on Terrorism and the ongoing Iraq War. In his State of the Union address last week, the President unsurprisingly devoted most of his speech to these priorities. But in the budget he proposed to Congress Monday, these priorities represent two glaring omissions.

On the President's top domestic priority, his proposed overhaul of Social Security, the President's budget is simply empty. The budget fails to suggest any way of handling what the President has called one of the biggest problems facing the nation. By not laying out an honest plan for how to balance the increases in the debt, cuts in benefits and his plan for private accounts, the President not only refuses to take a leadership role, he refuses to be honest with the American people.

During his campaign for re-election, the President did not hesitate to declare himself a 'War President.' But now that election season is over, the President has refused to budget one dime for the ongoing war in Iraq, which has already cost the American people nearly $300 billion and which will undoubtedly cost billions more. This 'War President' has plummeted the nation into massive deficits in this way - by not accounting for high war costs in his budgets with full knowledge that he will need to spend hundreds of billions of dollars toward the cause. How can the President claim to support our hundreds of thousands of troops in Iraq without requesting any funding for their cause? Or are we to assume that the President expects funds to emerge out of nowhere even in this climate of crippling deficits? I must conclude that not only is the President's policy fiscally reckless, it is deliberately dishonest with the American people.

If we are to sincerely address the rising deficits in this country as the President suggests his budget does, we must honestly assess how much the President's priorities will cost the American taxpayers. Without this honesty, the President's promises are as empty as his budget."

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