For those of you who are buying the Bush administration spin that this journey to the moon and Mars won’t cost more than an extra billion a year or so, check out Gregg Easterbrook’s analysis. The numbers unveiled are a fraction of the real cost. I’d like to trust the administration on budget matters; but they have violated any trust anyone ever gave them. Money quote:
So far all money numbers announced for the Bush plan seem complete nonsense, if not outright dishonesty. We shouldn’t expect George W. Bush himself to know that $12 billion is not enough to develop a spaceship. We should expect the people around Bush, and at the top of NASA, to know this. And apparently they are either astonishingly ill-informed and naxefve, or are handing out phony numbers for political purposes, to get the foot in the door for far larger sums later.
I’m afraid that the answer is that this administration simply doesn’t care what it’s spending or will spend. Deficits don’t matter, remember? These people are beginning to make Lyndon Johnson look like Herbert Hoover.
AND WHEN IN- DOUBT, LIE: Leave it to Rick Santorum to say the following: “I would just suggest we stayed within the budget targets the President has set forth. They are substantially less than what the increases were under the Clinton administration. They are, I would argue, fiscally responsible.” Here’s the truth: If you take defense and entitlement spending out of the picture altogether (and they have, of course, gone through the roof), Bush and the Republican Congress have upped domestic spending by a whopping 21 percent in three years. That compares with an actual decrease in such spending of 0.7 percent in the first three years of Bill Clinton. Spending on education is up 61 percent; on energy 22 percent; on health and human services 22 percent; on the Labor Department a massive 56 percent. There really is no spinning of this. Bill Clinton was a fiscal conservative. George W. Bush is a fiscal liberal of a kind we haven’t seen since LBJ. Maybe the Democrats would be worse. But naitonally, the GOP is outspending Democrats wherever they get the chance.- A USA Today study found that GOP-controlled state legislatures increased spending an average of 6.54 percent a year from 1997 to 2002, compared with 6.17 percent for legislatures run by Democrats. Fiscal conservatives really have no place to go any more. But if you had to pick, you’d have to support the Democrats.
LET THE KIDS PAY: I have to say I agree with the winner of the MoveOn.org ad competition. It’s not a hate message; it ignores Hitler; it doesn’t mention the war. Yes, it’s a little extreme. But it’s a vivid way of pointing out what this president is doing to future generations by his fiscal recklessness. He truly must be held to account.
The Dish 