|
ROLLING into a campaign year for Congress, President George W. Bush is trying to avoid bumps in the road. And this year there are plenty.
As he campaigns for his 2006 agenda, Bush seems to be putting off as many problems as possible. Balance the budget? Not on the horizon. Fix pensions and the health care programs for the elderly and disabled? Refer them to another commission. Cut oil dependence? Long in the future. Same for the moon-to-Mars programme.
Subdued by budget constraints and failure to sell his Social Security pension plan last year, Bush has proposed a modest series of short-term initiatives, a lot of unspecified spending cuts for the midterm, and some bold long-range schemes that future presidents will have to decide how - or whether - to pay for.
"It's kind of like the return of the 'magic asterisk,"' said budget analyst Stanley E. Collender, recalling accounting gimmicks of the 1980s that allowed for the budgeting of unspecified -- and never intended -- spending cuts and programs.
Bush faces major obstacles. "You have a president with low approval ratings, and a Congress that's more worried about their re-election than his legacy," said Collender, a former congressional budget aide and now general manager of Financial Dynamics Business Communications.
A lot is at stake. Even though Bush isn't on the ballot, continued Republican control of Congress hangs in the balance.
"If majority control of either chamber is lost, it makes him a lame duck overnight," said Bruce Buchanan, a University of Texas political scientist. "He loses control over, potentially, funding for the war effort, control over ethics investigations, and over the ability to move any of his agenda items."
This is the traditional time for presidents to stump for their new proposals, and Bush is following that pattern after delivering his State of the Union address and submitting his budget.
He campaigned for his 2006 agenda in New Hampshire last week, and has at least two out-of-town trips planned this week.
Bush's $2.77 trillion (euro2.33 trillion) fiscal 2007 budget plan leaves a lot to the imagination - and future presidents and Congresses.
Breaking with recent tradition, his five-year budget provides full spending details just for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, leaving a lot of blanks for the remaining four.
Bush vows to halve the annual budget deficit - expected to be $400 billion (euro336 billion) this year, up from $319 billion last year - by the time he leaves office in January 2009. But he provides little insight on how.
Getting there will require far deeper cuts in popular domestic programs than the ones Bush proposed in his most recent budget. This is not a happy message for lawmakers seeking re-election, and Bush and his advisers are mindful of that.
Bush's budget also does not include much of the anticipated costs of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The president's highly concentrated focus on the war and his efforts to make his first-term tax cuts permanent "aren't going to let him achieve his lower-priority goals, which include reducing the deficit," said Bill Frenzel, who was once the top Republican on the House Budget Committee.
"I don't believe that this budget, even if it could be achieved
Although Bush spent much of last year campaigning for his plan to add individual accounts to the Social Security pension program -- in exchange for reduced guaranteed future benefits -- now he is calling for a bipartisan commission to examine the impact of baby boomer retirements on the program and to recommend long-term solutions to control costs and I don't think it can be achieved -- is going to lower the deficit at all," said Frenzel.
With little fanfare, Bush's federal budget proposal included a plan that would let people set up private accounts -- and divert $700 billion (euro589 billion) of Social Security tax revenues to help pay for them over seven years. But it wouldn't begin until 2010, a year after he leaves office.
Bush's proposal for major income tax code overhaul, announced in last year's State of the Union, is also being delayed.
One reason Bush is putting off a lot of programs and providing scant details on paying for others: He and Congress don't have much wiggle room. Most of the government's money is already tied up in nearly untouchable programs.
More than 80 cents of every dollar is committed to interest on the federal debt, defense and homeland security, and guaranteed-benefit programs such as health care and pensions for the elderly, poor and disabled.
And each year that goes by without overhauling these programs, "the budget becomes more and more out of reach," said Claude Allen, Bush's domestic policy adviser.
Allen, who resigned his post last week, said it was vitally important to work with Congress to reform and shore up the pension and health care programmes -- or face a giant crunch by 2030.
But that still gives Congress a lot of breathing room.
|