You Can't Spell Witless Without W

I came across this story and it seems to keep bringing home the harsh truth, stupid is consistent.

"MARTIN CRUTSINGER

WASHINGTON (AP) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites) sent Congress a $2.57-trillion US budget plan Monday that hopes to reduce this year's projected record deficit with widespread cuts that range from reducing subsidies paid to U.S. farmers to cutting health care payments for poor people and veterans and trimming spending on the environment and education.



The budget - the most austere of Bush's presidency - would eliminate or vastly scale back 150 government programs and likely spark months of contentious debate in Congress, where legislators will fight to protect their favoured programs.


Of 23 major government agencies, 12 would see their budget authority reduced next year, including cuts of 9.6 per cent at the Agriculture Department and 5.6 per cent at the Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites).


In his budget message to Congress, Bush said: "In order to sustain our economic expansion, we must continue pro-growth policies and enforce even greater spending restraint across the federal government."


But Democrats complained that Bush was resorting to draconian cuts that would hurt the needy in order to protect his first-term tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy.


"This budget is part of the Republican plan to cut Social Security benefits while handing out lavish tax breaks for multimillionaires," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada. "Its cuts in veterans programs, health care and education reflect the wrong priorities and its huge deficits are fiscally irresponsible."


Bush's budget does not reflect the costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security by allowing younger workers to set up private investment accounts.


It also does not include any new spending for military operations in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites). The administration has said it will seek in coming weeks an additional $80 billion US for those operations.


Critics also contend that the five-year deficit projections also mask the costs of some Bush initiatives such as making his first-term tax cuts permanent, the bulk of which do not show up until after 2010. The budget puts the 10-year cost of making the president's tax cut proposals permanent at $1.29 trillion US."