The $2,770,000,000,000 question
February 7, 2006 | By Nathaniel Ward
The President submitted his proposed 2007 budget to Congress yesterday. The price tag? A whopping $2.7 trillion.
Here’s Brian Riedl’s quick breakdown of the proposed budget.
The good:
- Freezing non-defense discretionary spending
- Eliminating of more than 140 wasteful, failed or outdated programs to save $14 billion
- Slowing the growth of Medicare, saving $40 billion over five years
- Making the tax cuts permanent
The not-so-good:
- Focusing on quick short-term fixes, not long-term reforms
- Neglecting to reverse the tremendous growth of federal programs (see below)
- Failing to reform entitlements in any meaningful way—the “cuts” to Medicare that the administration touts will only trim the program’s growth between 2005 and 2011 from 70 percent to 66 percent. Only in Washington is this a “cut”
- Adding billions to the taxpayers’ tab through the Competitiveness Initiative to fund scientific research—even though such funding has failed to work in the past
To put all of this in context, Riedl has also put together a number of interesting charts demonstrating the dismal shape of federal spending in the past few years (link in PDF). The figures are appalling. Between 2001 and 2006,
- Energy spending has grown by 211 percent a year
- Community and regional development spending (whatever that is) has grown by 34.6 percent
- Education spending has grown by 18.9 percent a year
- International affairs spending has grown by 16.1 percent a year
- Health research spending has grown by 12.3 percent a year
- Medicare spending has grown by 9.5 percent a year
There were no decreases in any area.
Fortunately, advocates of limited government seem to have found a new life in Congress after last week’s leadership elections. Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said “there is nothing more important than economic freedom,” while Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) said he intends to restore “a surplus in the budget.” In an interview with National Review, Rep. Boehner said he also intends to reform pork-barrel spending and lay the groundwork for entitlement reform and changes to the outdated 1974 Budget Act, which governs how Congress spends money.
These are encouraging words, and Heritage plans to work closely with the new leadership and with the White House to ensure the necessary reforms are passed.
The Heritage media machine
Heritage has always recognized that if we are to truly influence national public opinion and the direction of our country we have to break the liberal media monopoly. To that end we have striven since our founding to increase our presence in the news media, to ensure that a conservative voice can answer the liberal spin and distortions.
In 2005, Heritage had a banner year for media appearances:
- 53 Heritage analysis made 1,400 radio and television appearances and wrote 900 op-eds—including five regular columns in major publications
- Nationwide, Heritage appeared in 8,600 newspaper articles, representing a combined circulation of 910 million people, including 265 editorials, 450 house columns and 130 nationally-syndicated columns
- Our experts sat for 68 interviews—more than twice as many as any other think tank—on the FOX News Channel’s prime time line-up, the highest-rated cable news programs in the nation
- Heritage experts appeared seventeen times on evening news programs on NBC, ABC, CBS and PBS—which boast nightly viewership of 12 million, 10 million, six million and six million, respectively
Our analysts were also ready to present conservative viewpoints whenever a major story hit the airwaves:
- After the London bombings in July, Heritage experts made 42 television and radio appearances
- After Hurricane Katrina hit in August, Heritage analysts did 76 radio and TV interviews, everywhere from NPR to ABC to CNBC
In fact, Heritage’s James Carafano managed to snare four separate appearances on ESPN—yes, the sports network—to explain the need for a strong national defense. And Brian Riedl, Heritage’s Grover M. Herman Fellow in Federal Budgetary Affairs, was featured in an article in today’s Women’s Wear Daily discussing the federal budget. Now that’s outreach!
Big labor’s “futile and stupid” gesture
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said last month his coalition of labor unions will work to enact oppressive restrictions on business in the name of something he calls “health care fairness.” Specifically, he wants to extend to 32 more states a Maryland law that punishes especially successful enterprises like Wal-Mart by compelling them to spend money on health care. As I’ve noted several times before, this is nothing more than a new eight-percent tax on doing business that will discourage growth and investment while lowering wages and providing no additional coverage to the uninsured.
Heritage’s Ed Haislmaier writes that Sweeney’s announcement is little more than “a really futile and stupid gesture” that represents “symbolic politics” instead of serious health care reforms. “In offering no prospects for extending coverage to even a single uninsured individual, Fair Share attains near perfect futility,” he writes. “Only a cynical genius could devise a tax-and-spend policy so utterly devoid of measurable effects.”
Legislators should instead look to Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) proposals for health care reform in Massachusetts or those proposed by Maryland State Sen. E. J. Pipkin (R). These are measures that could bring about real reform without spending additional taxpayer money—or kowtowing to anti-business interests.
Defending America—on the web
The Heritage Foundation has launched a new website, NationalSecurity.org, to serve as a clearinghouse for news and analysis about America’s national security. Be sure to check back for the latest news headlines, the important government documents and the renowned analysis from Heritage’s experts that ties it all together.
In other news
- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday to defend the secret NSA program that monitored al Qaeda communications.
- A leader of the terrorist group Hamas, which won last month’s Palestinian elections, said it was a mistake for the previous Palestinian government to recognize the existence of Israel. Not only that, Hamas fails to recognize Israel’s right to exist—and regularly uses terrorism to kill Israelis. As a result, the US and European governments should refuse to fund the UN programs that support the Palestinian government, Heritage’s Nile Gardiner says.
- Even liberal bloggers have respect for Heritage’s work. As Andrew Sullivan explains, “I’ve learned to trust Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation.”
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
