a rant about dubya

I arrived at school this morning and did the usual check of news from the homeland, only to be disappointed in the headline of the day on My Yahoo!

"Bush Proposes Big Cuts to Rein in Deficit" (click on 'a rant about dubya' above to read the story)

This man never ceases to amaze me. What also gets me is that slightly more than half of America thinks he's a pretty decent guy and re-elected him to the top spot. Could Kerry have done any better? i dunno.

What I read in this story saddened and infuriated me. Bush wants to make cuts in a budget that he caused to be higher. Correct me if I am wrong, but didn't he just ask for more money from Congress for whatever reason? Now he wants to cut the budget in areas to 'show Wall Street and fiscal conservatives that he is serious about tackling deficits'. Where does he want to cut? Check out this short list of people who are getting shafted:

Dep't of Housing and Urban Development - a cut of 11.5% of their total budget. Yup, you read it right. Bush wants to cut over 10% of the budget for an entire department. What does this department do? Umm, they try to do silly things like provide houses for the poor and make cities a more tolerable place to live.

Medicaid - a cut of $45 billion. In a country where there are millions who don't have health insurance, Bush now wants to cut a program that was designed to help those people who have jobs (and pay taxes) but can't quite afford the luxury of being able to go to the doctor. If you get sick, you better get another mortgage for your house to pay for the doctor's bills.

Amtrack - total abolishing of all subsidies. That's right, start filling the Bush pocketbook now with your cash because relatively clean mass transportation will soon be a thing of the past. We all know that Bush was and still is in the oil industry. What a better way to up the profits than to remove a source of competition. Amtrack has a hard enough time making money while trying to ease the burden on the roads and now all that money is gone. I can't imagine what would happen here if a European government were to get rid of their subsidies for railways.

Farm Aid - reduced by 3%. Here's a great idea! Let's cut money to the people that feed us! Brilliant! Perhaps then we can start drinking the oil that has made us rich... Farmers have enough trouble putting food on the table and paying the bills, now this moron wants to cut the money even more?

But hey, there are some government agencies that will be getting a raise. Oh, how I rejoice to know that these programs will be getting more money:

Homeland Security - 7% increase. An agency that didn't exist 4 years ago, their budget is already over $34.5 billion (that's before the 7% increase). While I agree that the US is in need of protection from terrorist attacks, what will giving them more money do? Basically, it puts more people in airports making sure that your shoes are x-rayed and your belt buckle is beeped at by a metal detector at least 3 times before you get on an airplane. My hat is off to Osama, he has made this country truly paranoid and GW is glad to pump money into it.

Pentagon - 5% increase (moving up over $420 billion). You've gotta put money into the troops and let's hope that this money is ear-marked for a specific purpose or who knows where it will go. $250 hammers? $1,000 toilet seats? I just pray that the military gets to spend this money and not the politicans. Pay the troops, they're dying for ya.

Iraq and Afghanistan - while Bush hasn't come out with new numbers on this yet, it is expected that he will be asking for another $81 billion for these wonderful campaigns (or should I call it them the 'Crusades of the New Millenium'). This money is separate from the Pentagon money so if you look at the money allocated to the military for the new budget, it looks like an increase of over $102 billion. Yeah, the poor don't need new houses...

So Bush is wanting to change the budget to prove that he is fiscally responsible. Please don't forget that GW came into office with a budget surplus and now has a deficit, a hole is getting deeper and deeper. Yet we hear of tax cuts that benefit the rich, programs that will pump more pollution into the air (cut emission standards), and destroy our natural resources (drilling for oil in Alaska state parks). If George Bush isn't the most destructive president in US history, then who is?