The Budget

Throughout the next week, Appropriations subcommittees will begin hearings on the fiscal year 2008 budget. The process begins with evaluating the president's budget request, and moving on from there. Chairman David Obey released a document comparing the President's budget request to the FY 2007 enacted Defense or Homeland Security bills and the Joint Funding Resolution recently passed by the House. The introduction:

The President's Budget Request Good Ideas, Bad Ideas, and the Usual Phony Baloney

Four months into fiscal year 2007, 13 cabinet agencies are operating without a budget because last year the President and the Congressional Republican leadership started off the year with phony assumptions and phony numbers that made it impossible for them to complete work on 9 of the 11 annual appropriations bills.

Instead of a real budget that made real choices, they played let's pretend. They pretended the President's tax cuts for the very rich were affordable when they were not. They pretended to cut the deficit when they did not. And when members of their own party wouldn't support the budget until they were promised increased funding for the Labor, Health and Education bill, the leadership pretended to provide increases that never materialized.

Pretending makes for a nice sound bite and a good photo op, but it left a hell of a mess for us to clean up in the joint funding resolution just passed by the House.

This year the President's budget request isn't much better. The difference is, this year we will have the opportunity to show just what a real budget looks like.

Read the full comparison (pdf) >>