President's Budget: *Everything* Is A Priority

President Bush's new 2008 budget boldly declares that "each program was closely reviewed to determine if it is among the Nation's top priorities.... [F]ailure to meet these criteria resulted in proposed termination or reduction of 141 programs for a savings of $12 billion."

Sounds pretty impressive, doesn't it? The president is proposing to eliminate or reduce all programs that aren't "top priorities." Wow!

But hold on. Chris Edwards of the Cato Institute has done the math.

Says Edwards: "Total federal outlays in 2007 will be $2.784 trillion. Thus, programs that are "top priorities" of the Bush administration account for 99.6 percent of all spending."

So Bush proposes to ruthlessly chop away at all that non-top-priority federal spending -- the whole "whopping" 0.4 percent of it. Meanwhile, the 99.6 percent that is "top priority" will continue and grow. After all, it is a top priority.

Source: Cato Blog: http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/
More on budget shenanigans:
http://www.reason.com/news/show/118632.html

READ MY LIPS:

The Bush administration may be squarely against new taxes, but its proposed fiscal 2008 budget seeks to raise almost $81 billion in new revenue over the next five years by hiking user fees and other charges on taxpayers and businesses. Technically, changes to these fees aren't taxes. But for anyone who must pay them -- everyone from recreational hikers to war veterans -- it's a question of semantics.

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/nation/16636417.htm

Without just compensation

Cato Institute
by Timothy Sandefur

"The U.S. Supreme Court's notorious 2005 decision in Kelo v. New London allowed state and local governments to condemn [steal] private land and transfer it to developers to construct shopping centers or other private development. The ruling led to a nationwide outcry, and last week voters in nine states adopted new restrictions on eminent domain to prevent such abuses. In September, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed five bills that he claimed would rein in abuses of eminent domain in California. Unfortunately, these laws accomplish little -- they simply tinker with procedural details while leaving the state's abusive redevelopment industry intact." (11/22/06)

Entire story:
http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6776