Congress Passes Whopping $2.9 Trillion Budget

I say "good."

Congress gave final approval on Thursday to a $2.9 trillion budget plan that promises big spending increases for education and health care and a federal surplus in five years.

The Senate's 52-40 vote probably sets up veto confrontations with President Bush over spending increases and the fate of many of his expiring tax cuts.

Shortly before the Senate vote, the House passed the measure by a 214-209 vote without a single Republican voting for it.

The nonbinding measure is not sent to Bush for his signature or veto. Rather, it sets parameters for Congress to follow when writing tax and spending legislation later this year.

The blueprint is for the budget year that begins Oct. It also makes a statement about Democrats' differences with Bush and was seen as a critical test of Democrats' ability to govern.

The budget plan seeks to bolster domestic programs whose budgets the president has curbed. It also would let expire tax cuts that have greatly benefited upper-bracket taxpayers.

Since we're now going to be the social services provider for a large part of the mostly impoverished western hemisphere, we're going to need to start jacking up taxes quite a bit if we want to avoid a runaway deficit.

I heartily urge President Bush to veto this budget -- requesting even greater spending and special emergency tax increases, perhaps creating a large "trust fund" to cover our fresh and severally-multiplied obligations to twenty, thirty, or fifty million new below- or just-above-poverty-level US citizens -- in order to keep our government finances from going the way of, well, the former home countries of our new fellow American citizens.

Update: President Bush just emailed me personally to say he could keep the tax cuts in place while also greatly expanding social spending for a suddenly-larger pool of lower-income citizens.

Apparently Harry Reid sold him some "Magic Beans" which, if I understand this correctly, grow beans made of platinum and diamonds.

So, no problem on the tax front. We gots them Magic Beans working for us now.

(PS, Bush didn't actually test the beans to see if they actually fruited platinum and rare gems, but says he "trusts" Harry Reid on this point, as he "looked inside his soul" to see a legitimate magical-bean vendor.)

posted by Ace at 06:34 PM

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