Money-burning Bush: How to make a one-term President

Manchester Union Leader ^ | February 2, 2004 | Editorial

[billorites]

PRESIDENT BUSH is trying to buy the 2004 election. It isn't going to work. He needs to get smart about spending, and now.

Conservatives predicted that the $400 billion price tag on the President's Medicare prescription drug bill was underestimated. Last week they were proved right as it was revealed that the plan will cost at least $540 billion — a third larger than projected.

Conservatives predicted that the federal deficit would increase dramatically without spending cuts. Last week they were proved right as the Congressional Budget Office projected a $100 billion increase in the deficit, and the White House revealed that the President's new budget will peg the deficit at $520 billion — a $145 billion increase over last year.

It is incredible that come this fall, Americans may have to vote for a Democrat to get a President who will curb federal spending and shrink the federal deficit. Yes, the Democrats promise the moon, but this President promises Mars.

President Bush is supposed to release a federal budget today that curbs federal spending. We'll believe it when we see it. He's promised to control spending before. But in the past month he has proposed a Mars exploration program estimated to cost $170 billion (and sure to cost more) as well as numerous small spending hikes such as increasing funding for the National Endowment for the Arts by $18 million.

We'd much rather the NEA fund Shakespeare (which it does) than freaky performance artists (which it used to). But the bottom line is that it shouldn't exist in the first place. If Americans want to fund art, they will go to plays, watch movies, attend concerts, and buy paintings. They don't need the federal government to do that for them.

There is precious little that Americans truly need the federal government to do. This President claimed to understand that. But his actions show that either he doesn't understand, or he was lying.

[sirchtruth]

The Union Leader is hardly Libertarian. This is an indication, from the state's biggest newspaper, how troublesome GWB's actions have been.

They may not be, but look who just made NH their target!

The FreeState whiners!

I really don't mind people complaining about Bush's spending, I do it myself, but I not going to put one of the current Dems in because of Bush's spending record, Hello?!

[billorites]

Maybe it is his version of "Read My Lips"

I have a very bad feeling going into this election.

[Blood of Tyrants]

Bush isn't a conservative and he has never called himself a conservative. He calls himself a "compassionate" consevative. I guess that means that he is "compassionate" with other peoples money.

[Lee_Atwater]

The writer(s) of this editorial know little about political history. GOP deficit hawkery sent the party into the abyss from about 1930 to 1978.

No President has lost an election over deficits (especially one who reduces tax rates). Following this op-ed's theory the GOP would have lost Presidential elections in 1984 and 1988 -- and won in 1964 and 1976. In 1992 GHWB lost an election after raising taxes to reduce deficits.

Austerity platforms lose elections.

It doesn't matter what you or I think about deficits; deficits do not matter electorally.

[chris1]

The problem is that if Kerry turns out to be a good campaigner, W will be in trouble. I don't think he will be, but Gore was a known lier, phony, and still got the popular vote. Dukakis and Mondale were very weak opponents. If the Dems put up a good camapaigner who seemed moderate and not insane, the outlook is not so rosy in terms of reelection.

[Maigrey]

As much as you wish to bring such knowledge to the discussion, have you ever thought that he is trying to fulfill a campaign promise?

I like it as much as having a Kennedy spending spree, but I do give the man credit for doing his campaign promises, good or not.

[jsraggmann]

Positive? I see very little "positive" coming out of Washington these days.

[Savage Beast]

Anybody who thinks that a Democrat President will curb federal spending and shrink the federal deficit is nuts--and is believing Democrat propaganda.

It was not just the Republicans who had a near-death experience in the Florida recount wars; the entire United States did. And if the Democrats should succeed, America will experience the permanent version.

The 2004 election will be the most important election since 1860--and possibly the most important election in American history. This is not hyperbole.

President Bush must be re-elected! A glimpse at the alternatives will explain why.

[theFIRMbss]

>I have a very bad feeling going into this election

When was the last time politics gave anyone a good feeling? If you want to feel good, eat a Hershey bar. (But watch your daily sugars...)

[George W. Bush]

Thanks for posting that link to this thread on that other thread.

Your comments are on target. So was the newspaper article.

It seems to me that many others around here were lying and fibbing years back when they'd indignantly apply all these same standards to RINOs and Dims and Clinton. Now, nary a peep.

To be effective, you have to stay with principle. Personalities will disappoint you or leave office eventually.

[WoofDog123]

"Most of you complaining, are the querulous Libet. who endlesslessly whine about everything and are more selfishly prickish and immature than many Dems I know...
"

Being taken aback by an administration that has the balls to propose a new entitlement, promise it is only 400B/10yrs, and a month later happily leak that is it 540b/10yrs, has issues. It isn't 'selfishly prickish and immature' to react to this, though it might be to defend it.

[goodnesswins]

Stop "Feeling" and Start THINKING..... Sheesh.

[Peach]

Got us out of Kyoto. Got us out of the ICC. Banned partial birth abortions. Two tax breaks. Strong on terror. The list of accomplishment is long.

[Pagey]

Americans may have to vote for a Democrat to get a President who will curb federal spending and shrink the federal deficit.


What? That is an entirely farcical sentence. This quote is from a Stephen Moore speech at Hillsdale college in 1997 and he really nails it.Our elected officials have abused the Constitution and gone much too far to receive their piece of the pie. Link to the speech follows:




...In a famous incident in 1854, President Franklin Pierce courageously vetoed an extremely popular bill intended to help the mentally ill saying: "I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity." To approve such spending, he argued, "would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded." Grover Cleveland, the king of the veto, rejected hundreds of congressional spending bills during his two terms as president in the late 1800s, because, as he often wrote: "I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution..."

"...Were Jefferson, Madison, Crockett, Pierce, and Cleveland merely hardhearted and uncaring penny pinchers, as their critics have often charged? Were they unsympathetic toward fire victims, the mentally ill, widows, or impoverished refugees? Of course not. They were honor bound to uphold the Constitution. They perceived - we now know correctly - that once the government genie was out of the bottle, it would be impossible to get it back in".

http://www.libertyhaven.com/politicsandcurrentevents/constitutionscourtsandlaw/unconstitutional.shtml