President Bush’s latest budget short-changes domestic programs such as homeland security, education and health care. The President should go back to the drawing board and present a budget serves America.
Deficits Sap America’s Strength
Budget Goes to Mars; Leaves American Children Behind
President's Budget Shortchanges Medicare
The $2.4 trillion budget that the President has rolled out for the next fiscal year contains the largest deficits in American history. These deficits will create a giant tax burden that our children will be paying off for years to come. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that within the next decade, the United States will be paying $318 billion a year in interest on the national debt. That amount is more than we currently spend annually on defense. Interest payments are money down the drain—money that cannot be used to build roads, improve schools, or defend America from terrorism. The money to pay those interest payments will have to come from somewhere. And it will likely come from increased taxes.
What is worse, the President’s budget dips deeply into the Social Security and Medicare Trust Funds—meaning our children will have their taxes raised at the same time as they face instability in Medicare and Social Security. If this budget passes, it will be one more step towards the Republicans’ long term goal of dismantling the programs that middle class America relies upon for their retirement security.
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As a result of the President's own "No Child Left Behind Law," states and localities are struggling to meet new requirements on students and teachers. While local schools struggle, the President has reneged on his end of the bargain, underfunding the Act by $26.5 billion since the law's inception and $9.4 billion in the new budget. Not surprisingly, states nationwide are forced to close the funding gap by increasing the cost of state universities, sometimes by as much as 40 percent. Students from low-income families are especially hurt by these forbidding costs.
So how does the President propose to do to address this crisis in higher education costs? A paltry increase of $33 million to federal Pell grants in the new budget, barely half of the amount Halliburton alleged overcharged our government in Iraq. The President has touted this increase as a victory for education, when in fact the Pell Grant program is already underfunded by $2.5 billion for the current academic year. Under his proposal, only 36,000 of the nearly 5 million students receiving Pell Grants would be eligible.
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The President has abandoned the promise he made to seniors for quality health and prescription drugs in his proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2005. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next 10 years, the Medicare bill passed in 2003 will cost taxpayers a whopping $540 billion—contrary to what the President originally claimed would cost only $400 billion.
The President's prescription drug plan, while increasing the federal deficit, fails to cover 7 million Medicare recipients. The White House estimates that 10 million seniors and persons with disabilities will have no prescription coverage. Only those with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty line ($17,910 for a family of two) are eligible for the President’s plan.
While the Administration was busy pushing a bill to overhaul Medicare and giving the public inaccurate cost estimates, they didn’t mention the fact that the total number of participants in the Medicare drug benefit will rise from about 900,000 in 2003 to 2.4 million in 2007, necessarily increasing the prescription drug program’s cost.
Seniors have worked their whole lives to earn these benefits. They have the right to know that 2.7 million retirees will lose their prescription drug coverage and that premiums will increase 12 percent every year if they do not enroll immediately.
The President’s plan has put the future quality and stability of healthcare in this country in jeopardy. For our seniors, we need positive plans with lasting outcomes. Our Commander in Chief has not provided either.
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Posted February 3, 2004
