Hold That Line!
President Bush will propose an increase of less than 1 percent for federal programs not related to defense or homeland security, effectively freezing discretionary spending in the next budget, after coming under fire from conservatives to control runaway spending.
But the president will propose increasing governmentwide homeland security funding by 9.7 percent in the fiscal 2005 budget, and the military budget is expected to increase by a small amount.
...
The less-than-1 percent growth will be the smallest since Mr. Bush took office in 2001 — and the lowest since his father, President Bush, proposed his fiscal 1993 budget.
"But we must spend what is necessary to win the war on terror, protect the American people at home and to restore economic growth. And because of these life-and-death priorities, the rest of government spending must be restrained," Mr. Duffy said.
Some fiscal conservatives, who sharply criticized the president and congressional Republicans this week for spending like "drunken sailors," said the proposal leaked yesterday is a step in the right direction so long as Mr. Bush follows through.
Get the rest of this story from the Washington Times.
Matt's Chat
Sweet music to my ears! But, Mr. President, this is something that you have to follow through on for credibility's sake. The article tells us that the administration started work on this budget proposal prior to the fiscal conservative uproar, I can't fully accept that their message hasn't been heard by key officials in the administration. This has to be why we are hearing about this now.
In the end, it doesn't matter why... What matters is that we get spending back under control.
Mark's Remarks
While I agree with this idea, and while I think it is the right thing to do, I can hear the libs now: he is taking money from seniors, making kids go hungry, and denying key programs, when in reality he is towing the line on them. They are not getting massive increases, but will still have money. The libs will assault this, but hopefully the American people will realize what our priorities should be, and will get behind this. This is a great idea, but ultimately, it might fail because the libs in Congress will add pork to it, and there will be compromise. Reagan tried this, and it worked partially, but Dims added pork and Reagan had to compromise. I hope it does not work this way this time, but it might have to in order for the President to get key votes in other issues. However, I think it is about time he come back to the way of conservative thinking on spending. Way to go, Mr. President!!!
This was Mark...thanks for reading.
