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September 10, 2005

Friday news dump:Bad News Bush edition

The traditional Bad News Bush Friday news dump took place yesterday. With all the Katrina hooplah these pieces went flying under the radar of most.

Final base-closing report criticizes Pentagon

The Pentagon overestimated savings from base closings by $30 billion and some of its plans for streamlining the Army, Navy and Air Force might have made the services less efficient, a federal commission that reviewed the process said Friday.

In its final report, the nine-member panel also questioned whether the Pentagon should have postponed the current round of base closings and consolidations, the first in a decade, until a major review of the national defense strategy was finished.

But here's the kicker:

With its five months of work complete, the base-closing commission voiced its concerns even as it approved roughly 86 percent of what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld recommended as he sought to save money by getting rid of extra space in the domestic military network.

Boiled down: Your plan sucks but you can have it anyway.

Rumsfeld's pretend $49 billion cost savings was adjusted to $19 billion, and apparently will make the military less efficient. But since the military has already been understaffed and underequipped, overdeployed and underrecruiting, what's a little more bending over for the "safety and security" folks? The military is only one of the main Constitutional reasons for the federal government's existence.

The PR machine that it takes to sell this swill is clearly the best in history.

In other radar ducking news, Analysis Sees Deficits Growing Under Bush:

Even before the cost of Hurricane Katrina is added to the federal ledger, a Congressional Budget Office study commissioned by Democrats predicts President Bush will fail to keep his promise to cut the deficit in half by the time he leaves office.

The study by the nonpartisan CBO assumes that Congress will heed Bush's call for new tax cuts and for making those passed in 2001 and 2003 permanent. It also assumes a big slowdown in spending on the Iraq war, tight caps on domestic agency budgets and new individual Social Security accounts.

The study was requested by Rep. John M. Spratt Jr., D-S.C., the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. He says it reflects a likelier budget scenario than CBO's official estimates, which do not foresee new tax cuts.

The study predicts that the $331 billion budget deficit projected for the current budget year would rise to $370 billion by 2009, the year Bush has promised to cut the deficit to at least $260 billion. Bush promised to cut the deficit in half from a projection in February 2004 of a $521 billion deficit for 2009.

By 2015, the deficit would hit $640 billion under CBO's study.

The response from the White House came in true Republicanspeak style:

"Instead of complaining about the deficit, how about doing something about it?" said Bush spokesman Trent Duffy, noting that Spratt opposes Republican efforts to trim just $35 billion from federal entitlement programs over the next five years.

I'm no math genius, but $35 billion from programs that help people contribute to society is somehow going to do something about a $521 billion red ink stain? And that's only if they don't screw Iraq up any further and need to dump more cash there. Tack on the billions for Katrina...and that $35 billion is even more anemic.

Somebody needs to buy Mr. Duffy a calculator.

Posted by Carla at September 10, 2005 08:32 AM