No sweat. Bush is fucking famous for cutting spending. "The human hatchet" they call him.

He'll get Congress in line.

I believe a character in David Copperfield had something to say about this:

Mr. Micawber: "Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pound ought and six, result misery."

If only that were true for Congress. Perhaps they should institute some kind of variable pay for the Congresspeople (and President) -- every little piece of earmarked pork gets docked from their office budget and base salary. They should get bonuses if they pass clean appropriations bills. Of course, the Supreme Court would have to be the arbiter as to whether they did that...

LINE. ITEM. VETO.

It was declared unconstitutional during the Clinton era. We need a constitutional amendment to explicitly allow it.

LIV is the only way to get the spending under control. Its unreasonable to expect individual congresspersons to slit their own throats(pork==votes). Someone is going to have to do it for them.

I have to laugh at how many people can ignore the fact that all the govt spending of borrowed money AFFECTS the economy! It pays wages (and so reaps taxes) of contractors, the military, etc etc, and money flows into communities, more taxes are collected, etc etc.

I have to repeat the obvious: that does not mean that govt spending is efficient, or necessary, or a good jobs program, or justifiable.

It just means it is silly to ignore that the borrow-and-spend strategy of the current admin, on a scale of hundreds of BILLIONS, has REAL effects on the economy!

In some attempt at fairness to our Congresscritters (and POTUS), probably half of the 700 billion increase was for stuff not occurring in 2000 - eg, Afghanistan/Iraq. But that leaves a heck of a lot of money.

And I agree with the article, which is yet another attempt at pointing out something to the NYTimes and a lot of other people that has been shown repeatedly since the era of Wilson/Coolidge if not earlier: while no panacea, lower taxes release money for growth/improvement/emloyment and result in increased income. There is a breakpoint there somewhere (cut taxes to zero, no income) but it hasn't been approached yet,

Not surprising for the infamous New York Pravda this paper is only good as birdcage linning