Post Scripts: Billions of reasons to budget

There’s no good news coming out of Washington, D.C. about the budget. Bush’s next budget proposal will come close to freezing most domestic programs and seek nearly $200 billion in savings from federal health programs. Overall, the Bush budget will exceed $3 trillion with the federal deficit coming close to $178 billion for this year and next.
The president is promising us a plan that would erase the federal deficit by 2012. Who among us believes such monstrous statements?
Where will the savings come from? Bush says he will take it from Medicare over five years — all $178 billion of it. Most of the savings will come from savings in Medicare, nearly triple what he proposed last year. Much of the savings will come from freezing reimbursement rates for most health care providers for three years. An additional $17 billion would come from the Medicaid program that provides health coverage for the truly poor.
An administration official said “It’s a small increase. Very small.” Seems like we’ve been fed this line before. President Bush, in his State of the Union speech, said: “American families have to balance their budgets, and so should their government.” Our government is expected to spend about $650 billion on Medicare and Medicaid in 2008. It represents more than $1 out of every $5 spent by the federal government.
The Office of Management and Budget officials said Bush views the budget as a final opportunity to slow the growth of entitlement programs but recognizes that Congress will not want to go along with such a gamble.
He said spending on Medicare and Medicaid would increase under his budget but not as quickly as expected. In other words go ahead and spend all that money and let others worry with the problems.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said the Bush budget would project the 10-year cost of the program from 2008 to 2017 at $915 billion. When all is said and done, which political party can you believe when in this era of high budget deficits nobody seems to care about the huge debt we are placing on the backs of our children and grandchildren.
Democrats, of course, who are already famous for piling up deficits, are claiming Bush’s budgets are misguided. Next time you hear a politician use the word “billion” in a casual manner, think about whether you want them spending YOUR tax money. A billion seconds ago it was 1959. A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive. A billion hours ago our ancestors were living in the stone age.
A billion dollars ago was only eight hours and 20 minutes at the rate our government is spending it.
Not that I’m not sympathetic to people in New Orleans but they are asking for $250 billion to rebuild the city. Well, if you are one of the 484,674 residents of New Orleans, you each get $516,528! If you are a family of four your family gets $2,066,012!
So when you hear your congressman use the word “billion,” think if they are qualified to spend all that cash without more detailed supervision!