PRESIDENT BUSH'S $3.1 trillion budget for 2009, released yesterday, doesn't have any chance of passing Congress without extensive revisions. But since it is submitted in his last full year in office, the budget is a statement of his legacy, which can be summed up in five words: wars, tax cuts, budget deficits.
Defense spending would approach $515.4 billion, the highest amount, adjusted for inflation, since World War II. That's still a smaller percentage of the gross domestic product than was the case in the 1950s and 1960s, but it's an extraordinary amount when the chief threat isn't the Red Army but terrorists wielding improvised explosive devices and suicide vests. And the budget understates the amount needed to sustain US forces fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush, when he leaves office, will be the first president to leave two unfinished wars to his successor.
According to the budget, federal receipts will drop this year by $47 billion, to $2.5 trillion, as the economy softens. This decline is expected to produce a $410 billion budget deficit this year, a big increase from the $162 billion deficit in fiscal 2007. With a recession threatening, Congress is not in the mood to rescind the tax cuts that Bush pushed through earlier in his presidency. But it would have been better to maintain tax rates at 1990s levels, and give out tax rebates in the next few months to stimulate the economy, as Bush and Congress propose to do, rather than accept deficits in good times and bad.
In the long-range forecasts that are part of the budget, Bush proposes to extend tax cuts beyond 2011, when they are due to expire, even though the beginnings of the baby boomers' retirement will put unprecedented stresses on Medicare. Bush estimates that the budget will be balanced by 2012, with the tax cuts in effect. To eliminate the deficits, he had to play tricks with defense spending, seek cuts in many domestic programs, arbitrarily restrain the growth of Medicaid and Medicare, and neglect a permanent fix in the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will bite deep into the middle class unless it is amended to target the truly wealthy, its original intent.
Bush does seek a 7 percent increase (to $7.5 billion) to pay for enforcement programs by the Internal Revenue Service. Given the conflicting pressures to which he would subject the budget, that's the least Bush could do to increase revenues.
Congress and the people would never go along with the stingy allocations for domestic programs. And the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will impose strains on the budget for years that Bush refuses to calculate. The president is setting up his successor for a major fight over restoring tax rates to their 1990s levels to sustain vital federal programs, both at home and abroad.
