This is very important: 1. While Bush's stomp speech criticizes Kerry's plans as big-spender ones, his own plans are likely to cost 50% more! 2. He's been spending so much on his war that he'll have to make some extremely cruel cuts in education and homeland security in 2006! He has already mortgaged our near- and far-futures, and he criticizes Kerry's plans....
According to Washington Post:
The administration has been secretive about the cost of the war and the likely impact that the bulging defense budget and continuing cost of tax cuts will have on domestic spending next year. The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include $2.3 billion in spending cuts from virtually all domestic programs not mandated by law, including education, homeland security and others central to Bush's campaign.
Also of note:
The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade.
A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan.
Bush's pledge to make permanent his tax cuts, which are set to expire at the end of 2010 or before, would reduce government revenue by about $1 trillion over 10 years, according to administration estimates. His proposed changes in Social Security to allow younger workers to invest part of their payroll taxes in stocks and bonds could cost the government $2 trillion over the coming decade, according to the calculations of independent domestic policy experts.
And Bush's agenda has many costs the administration has not publicly estimated. For instance, Bush said in his speech that he would continue to try to stabilize Iraq and wage war on terrorism. The war in Iraq alone costs $4 billion a month, but the president's annual budget does not reflect that cost.
Bush is not a small government conservative, obviously. But his large government is an unusual one: it will give little to the poor, the sick, the old or the young, but it will give loads to the wars he plans and to his pals in business. And to the conservative elite, of course.
The whole article is well worth reading, even for those who think economics is too dismal to contemplate.