Posted on 12/19/2004 6:53:46 PM PST by wagglebee
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration will seek to slash government spending next year, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow said on Sunday, but he was less specific than the president in predicting how quickly the deficit would fall.
Snow, who was asked by President Bush to stay during Bush's second term after heavy speculation he would be replaced, said the administration's budget proposal early next year would rely heavily on spending cuts.
"It will be a tight, disciplined budget with spending under disciplined controls," he said in an interview on CNN's "Late Edition" program. "Everything is being looked at and put under the microscope."
Snow declined to say what programs are being targeted or how soon Bush would meet his goal of cutting the deficit in half.
But he said the budget proposal for fiscal year 2006, which begins next Oct. 1, would actually reduce current spending on some programs, not just slow their expected levels of inflationary increase, which often passes for budget-cutting in Washington.
The Pentagon is among the departments under White House pressure to restrain spending.
"All agencies are being asked to identify programs that are duplicative, outdated or don't produce results," said Chad Kolton, spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget. "But decisions on funding won't be final until the president actually submits his budget next year."
The Pentagon is still expected to receive an increase in funding, but the increase is not expected to be as large as years past under Bush.
Kolton said "the needs of our troops in the field will be fully provided through our supplemental request next year." The emergency budget request for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is expected to top $80 billion.
FIVE-YEAR PLAN
Bush declared during his re-election campaign that he would cut the federal budget deficit in half within five years, after having mounted successive record shortfalls of $412.55 billion in the 2004 fiscal year that ended on Sept. 30 and $377.14 billion in fiscal 2003.
The government had a budget surplus when President Bill Clinton left office in 2001. Bush has blamed the deficits on the 2001 recession, the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the United States and the U.S. military response, but Democrats charge that Bush's tax cuts also helped widen the gaps.
Snow declined to predict the size of the budget gap for fiscal 2005 and on at least two occasions during the interview he opted not to specifically echo the administration's five-year deficit cutting prediction, saying instead that Bush was committed to halving the gap in "the next few years."
In a separate interview on "Fox News Sunday," Snow also said the gap would be halved "over the next few years."
As recently as Dec. 9, White House budget director Joshua Bolten said the administration was on "a very clear path toward meeting and, in fact, exceeding the president's goal of cutting the deficit in half by (fiscal year) 2009."
Bush's goal is based on an outdated $521 billion deficit projection for 2004 which was derided by critics as inflated, a charge Bolten denied.
The Congressional Budget Office has projected $2.3 trillion in deficits over the next decade.
DEFICIT LINK TO INTEREST RATES?
Snow said he does not believe there is a direct link over the short term between the higher level of government borrowing needed to finance deficit spending and rising interest rates that increase borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.
Over the long term, however, interests rates could rise if financial markets lose confidence in the government because they see its budgetary process as undisciplined, he said.
"We're not going to let that happen," said Snow. "We're going to deal with the deficit. The president's committed to it. And it will be cut in half over the next few years."
But Bush has ruled out raising payroll taxes to help pay for his ambitious plans to overhaul Social Security, leaving few options other than a sharp rise in government borrowing to bankroll transition costs estimated at $1 trillion to $2 trillion over 10 years.
Yup
Um, well, Snow isn't the person in the Administration whose job it is to make budget decisions. No wonder he's a short-timer.
But he said the budget proposal for fiscal year 2006, which begins next Oct. 1, would actually reduce current spending on some programs, not just slow their expected levels of inflationary increase, which often passes for budget-cutting in Washington.
Snow the budget already has 22.5 billon dollars in PORK in it.
This is a little off topic, but can someone get me the actaul data on the Cliton "budget surplus?" Thanks in advance.
There NEVER was a Clinton budget surplus. It was all based on projection which assumed the stock market would rise forever, there would never be another recession, and America would never be involved in a major military conflict. It was "style over substance" just like the rest of the Klintoon "legacy."
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion.
I agree, if the GOP had not passed new entitlements and all kinds of bork spending then maybe the military cut could have been avoided. This is no time to cut the militray. Nothing but fools in Washington D.C.
Yeah, okay. I'll believe it when I see it.
I don't know about that, Reagan's military was build to fight the USSR, the USSR is gone. But we certainly need a strong Navy to keep the Chicoms in check in the Pacific. And we need a much larger Army to occupy Iraq and give NG and Reserves a rest. Air Force and Marines seem to be in good shape.
The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) and Virginia Class Submarine pretty much have the littoral combat field covered but it will be awhile before enough ships are built to be at full strength in that field.
We need more missile and air defense ships such as the Arleigh Burke class (a moving ABM system is a safer ABM system, just as ballistic missile subs are considerably less vulnerable than land-based silos), this is where non-carrier ship groups would come into its own: dedicated missile defense patrols in the ocean. An Arleigh burke can carry nintey six missile incterceptors versus the few that we have on land currently and can overwhelm a chicom or NorKor (North Korea) ICBM attack through sheer numbers.
We need more ballistic missile submarines. Sure just one Ohio class has more nuclear warheads than the entire Chicom missile force, but we need more than just 18 to confront the possibility of both China and Russia combined.
For the Army, we need more troops, more tanks, more Bradleys, more Strikers, and an increase in the helicopter force (the US's most frequintly used anti-tank units).
There was a budget surplus, and Newt Gingrich was the author of the budget bills and likes to bill himself as the author of the biggest surpluses ever.
Clintons negotiations with Newt are infamous as was Clintons attempts to cut defense and Intel.
No, there was not. It was an accounting trick. Money that was supposed to be spent in the Social Security "Trust Fund" was spent as part of the regular budget. A computer-generated IOU was placed in the SSTF but there was no money there.
Since the SSTF monies were now being spent as part of the general fund, the government "had" more than it projected that it "needed" and you get a "surplus."
could you point me to some sources? Thanks
Your talking about the projections and the so-called social security surplus (which never existed)
The budget surplus did exist and was being used to pay down the national debt. Newt was not pulling accounting tricks when he was writing up the budget, when government was pulling in more then it was spending, the excess was being used to take care of the national debt.
The projections that were made however, were hot air. It was an poor assumption and some trickery to make it look like the same situation could continue indefinatley, when it simply could not.
If you add the SSTF monies to the general fund, you automatically get a "surplus" that does not exist.
The politicians are lying to you and they know they are lying to you. The reason they keep doing it is because people like you believe them.
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