George Bush's Dishonest Budget

Robert L. Borosage
February 07, 2006

Robert L. Borosage is co-director of the Campaign For America's Future, a liberal think tank and advocacy group. CAF is a co-founder of the Apollo Alliance program to promote clean energy and good jobs.

The budget George W. Bush submitted to the Congress yesterday is a lie and a moral disgrace. No surprise. Dead on arrival, it provides little more than carrion for what will be a long, vitriolic partisan food fight that will largely ignore the true challenges facing this country.

The budget is a lie because it shamelessly omits a true accounting of the nation’s financial outlook. To cover the costs of his tax cuts, the White House doesn’t supply projections beyond 2011. Its budget excludes the cost of Iraq and Afghanistan (to say nothing of Iran) after 2007. It omits the cost of fixing the Alternative Minimum Tax—which will total hundreds of billions over the next five years.