The Outrageous 2004 Federal Budget

"The government ran a deficit of $344.3 billion in the first eight months of the 2004 budget year, according to the latest snapshot of the nation’s balance sheets.

"The data released by the Treasury Department yesterday showed more red ink than the $290.9 billion shortfall for the corresponding period last year.

"For the current budget year, which began Oct. 1, spending has totaled $1.53 trillion, 5.5 percent more than the same period a year ago. Revenue came to $1.19 trillion, 2.3 percent more than the previous year." Source: Washington in Brief, The Washington Post, 6/11/04, p. A9

"The trade deficit reached a new record in March: $46 billion, up 9 percent from the $42 billion deficit measured in February. The March trade deficit was $3 billion higher than the same month in 2003. The negative balance of trade in goods increased by 8 percent for the month from $47.5 billion in February to $51.2 billion in March. Exports of goods during March reached a new record of $67 billion (up from $65 billion); but goods imports also reached a new record: $118.4 billion." Source: Manufacturing News, 5/17/04, Vol. 11, No. 10

Excerpts from Howard Phillips Issues and Strategy Bulletin of December 31, 2003

The Debt to the Penny

10/31/2003	$6,872,675,839,106.67
10/30/2003	$6,860,382,879,862.78
10/28/2003	$6,850,042,548,549.47
10/24/2003	$6,847,437,986,849.37
10/22/2003	$6,834,787,133,873.25
10/14/2003	$6,816,232,489,123.39

Source: Public Debt at Treasury

"A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money." G. Gordon Liddy

Source: NotableNewsNow@freecongress.org, 11/4/03

"The deficit, projected a few months ago to be around $475 billion for the fiscal year that started on Oct. 1, now seems likely to hit $500 billion, up from $374 billion last year. The White House’s goal of cutting it at least in half within a few years will be hard to achieve despite the economic rebound and the growth in tax revenue it is expected to generate, budget analysts in the government and on Wall Street say.

"Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former Bush administration official who is now director of the Congressional Budget Office, said bringing the deficit down to some $250 billion in the next five years ‘is going to be very hard to do’ even if the economic recovery remains strong and unemployment falls sharply.

" ‘The thing I would caution is that the economic growth is not going to be enough’ to solve the fiscal problem, Mr. Holtz-Eakin said in an interview. …

" ‘I would be in favor of the administration being much tougher, taking the toughest possible stance on fiscal discipline,’ said the chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative Jim Nussle of Iowa."

"Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said government spending per household in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was $20,301 – the highest level since World War II, he said, even after adjustment for inflation. (His analysis showed that the figure peaked in 1944 at $26,445, as measured in current dollars.)"

"Though the administration has said the spending increases are largely a result of a need to strengthen the military and protect against terrorism at home, most of the new spending since 2001, 55 percent, has gone to programs with no link to national security, Mr. Riedl said."

" ‘The Republican Party,’ he said, ‘has grown addicted to federal spending as a means to re-election.’ …

"In the long run, the government faces rising interest costs from the increasing level of debt it is amassing. (Debt held by the public, the portion of the total national debt generated by year-to-year budget deficits, currently stands at around $4 trillion.) Only a few years ago, when the nation was awash in budget surpluses, both parties pledged to pay off the debt held by the public. Such a step would have made it easier for the government to address a problem now just over the horizon: the prospect that Social Security and Medicare will not be able to pay full benefits to the baby boomers as they retire." Source: Richard Stevenson and Edmund Andrews, The New York Times, 11/29/03, p. A10

Table 1. Spending by Department
Percent Change in Real Outlays in First Three Years
Department	Reagan	Bush
Agriculture	-13.2%	8.5%
Commerce	-29.0%	9.6%
Defense	18.6%	27.6%
Education	-21.8%	60.8%
Energy	-19.6%	22.4%
Health & Human Services	9.0%	21.4%
Housing & Urban Dev.	-3.7%	6.1%
Interior	-4/6%	23.4%
Justice	1.2%	11.0%
Labor	-29.4%	56.0%
State	9.5%	32.5%
Transportation	-13.0%	-1.3%
Treasury	31.1%	-7.0%
Veteran Affairs	-3.9%	29.4%
Total Outlays	6.8%	15.6%
Sources: Budget of the U.S. Government and Mid-Session Review for FY2004

"The administration recently released its mid-session review of the federal budget for fiscal 2004, The new data reveal that discretionary outlays will rise a stunning 16.9 percent in FY2003, having risen 13.1 percent in FY2002.…

"[O]ne way to evaluate fiscal priorities is to compare budgets as originally proposed by Reagan and Bush. In each of Bush’s three budgets, he has proposed increases in total federal outlays above baseline levels. In his FY2002 budget, he asked for $43 billion over 10 years to ‘reform’ education and $153 billion over 10 years to ‘reform’ Medicare. He got his big education increase, and his FY2004 budget pushed up his Medicare request to $400 billion. …"

"Bush has not vetoed a single spending bill during his tenure in office. Instead, he has signed every bill crossing his desk including huge education and farm subsidy bills. By contrast, President Reagan vetoed 22 bills during his first three years in office.

"Bush has also benefited from a more favorable party arrangement in Congress than Reagan. Although Republicans controlled the Senate during Reagan’s first term, Democrats dominated the House. Bush has had a GOP-controlled House and Senate (with the exception of the period from mid-2001 to the end of 2002). … Unfortunately, Bush has thus far shown no leadership on spending reform even though he enjoys strong support from the majority in Congress." Source: Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven, Cato Institute’s Tax & Budget Bulletin, August 2003

"For the past several years, USAID, run by the U.S. State Department, has awarded multimillion dollar grants to promote homosexuality and promiscuity to teens throughout Central and South America, and Africa.

"In USAID-funded programs throughout Central America, children and teens are targeted with pamphlets and advertisements of colored and flavored condoms which depict the faces of young boys and children as young as seven years of age (cf. Y, Como No se Pasa, Fundacion Fomento en Salud, Honduras)."

"USAID-funded condom billboards appear in newspapers and on billboards overseas, in violation of local laws which require information about risks. In family planning clinics throughout Central America and Africa, IUDs and Depo-Provera are promoted to teens and women without adequate information about risks, in violation of informed consent provisions of U.S. law. In Honduras, IUDs are provided to anemic women without informed consent, and massive sterilization programs are promoted in government hospitals."

"In Honduras, a USAID manual titled, Speaking About Sexuality With Young People, is aimed at getting ‘boys and girls’ to ‘acknowledge the existence of homosexuality in the population.’

"According to this USAID manual, promoted in schools throughout Honduras, homosexuality fulfills an important role in the sexual socialization of youngsters. ‘Youngsters today have to recognize the existence of male and female homosexuality.’ "

"In a section of the manual titled ‘Talking About Sexuality With Youngsters,’ teachers are encouraged to ask ten-year-old children: ‘If you have never had sex with a person of the same sex, how do you know if you would prefer it?’ Homosexuals such as Oscar Wilde are promoted as heroes, and photos of transvestites are provided to children."

"The manual is part of USAID’s AIDSCAP program, implemented in over 30 developing countries by highly funded population control groups including Family Health International (FHI).

"FHI is one of USAID’s oldest and most highly funded population control NGOs. According to USAID, FHI ‘improves reproductive health’ among people ten to 24 years old (HIV/AIDS Partnerships, USAID, Global Health Bureau). FHI also promotes programs designed to provide lubricants for men who have sex with other men (‘HIV/AIDS Interventions With Men Who Have Sex With Men,’ Family Health International, 2003)."

"Most people would agree that promoting homosexuality and distributing graphic sexual material to children as young as ten years old is wrong. Most taxpayers would be alarmed to know that U.S. funds are paying for these programs. But FHI has been aggressively promoting sexual material, including material on homosexuality, to children for years.

"In 2001, FHI received $85 million from USAID to promote sex education to children and teens (‘USAID Award to FHI Promotes Youth Reproductive Health,’ Family Health International, October 2, 2001). FHI’s program, titled YouthNet, provides IUDs, contraceptive pills, and Depo-Provera to children as young as ten years old in developing nations. Post-abortion care (a euphemism for manual vacuum abortion) is also available to children."

"USAID’s YouthNet program is designed to destroy genuine faith-based abstinence initiatives, and integrate programs for teens and children into already-existing adult HIV/AIDS/Sexual and Reproductive Health programs throughout the world. Where genuine faith-based groups strive to promote abstinence to teens, FHI seeks to ‘go beyond traditional children’s religious education to address sexual behaviors explicitly’ (‘Faith-Based Programs for Youth,’ Family Health International, 2003)." Source: Steven W. Mosher, The Wanderer, 8/14/03, p. 9

In an editorial page column for Investor’s Business Daily (11/26/03, p. A14), Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, advocates the defeat of George Bush and the election of a Democrat to the White House in 2004 as a way of restoring fiscal soundness to the U.S. government’s policies.

"On Jan. 23, 1996, Bill Clinton told the nation, ‘The era of big government is over.’ If so, it sure didn’t last very long. Today, the era of big government is back with a vengeance, ushered in by a massive new prescription drug entitlement, a pork-laden energy bill of grotesque proportions…."

"What few people, including myself, ever thought would happen was that this new era of big government would be implemented by Republicans controlling both Congress and the White House. It makes me long for the good old days of gridlock."

"In his new book, ‘In an Uncertain World,’ former Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin extols the Clinton administration’s fiscal record. He correctly notes that the federal budget deficit was close to $300 billion when Clinton took office and had a surplus of more than a $200 billion when he left. …

"[I]it was the combination of the two – a Democratic White House and a Republican Congress – that was really responsible for the budgetary turnaround. Each side was checked from enacting new spending programs. The result was that the budget was virtually on automatic pilot for most of the Clinton administration.

"[A] number of economic conservatives suggested in 2000 that the best electoral outcome for growth and the stock market would be Al Gore as president with the GOP retaining control of Congress.

"As financial columnist Daniel Kadlec wrote: ‘The Dow has fared best when one party has controlled the White House and the other has controlled Congress, the optimum formula being a Democratic president and a Republican Congress. That combo has produced Dow gains, excluding dividends, of 10.7% a year.’ …

"The only people who really oppose gridlock are political scientists and party activists, who decry it as a barrier to ‘getting things done.’ A new book by Brookings Institution scholar Sarah Binder, ‘Stalemate,’ lays out the case against gridlock on these grounds.

"The problem is that getting things done is usually a bad thing. All of our nation’s entitlement programs, for example, were enacted when one party controlled all the elected bodies of the federal government. Social Security came under Franklin Roosevelt and a Democratic Congress in the 1930s, Medicare under Lyndon Johnson and a Democratic Congress in the 1960s, and now a prescription drug entitlement under George Bush and a Republican Congress. Our grandchildren’s grandchildren will be paying higher taxes for this latest elderly vote-buying scheme when everyone who supported it is long dead.

"The simplest way of restoring gridlock would be to elect a Democrat as president next year."

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