| Author |
Message |
    
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1730
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, February 02, 2007 - 04:40 pm: | 
|
Just a quick reminder to let you know where your tax dollars are going.......
Bush budget hikes war funding...!
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
02 Feb 2007
Keeping troops in Iraq for another year and a half will cost nearly a quarter-trillion dollars — about $800 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. — under the budget President Bush will submit to Congress Monday.
Bush will ask for $100 billion more for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year and seek $145 billion for 2008, a senior Pentagon official said Friday. Those requests come on top of about $344 billion spent for Iraq since the 2003 invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.
At the same time, Bush's budget request will propose cost curbs on Medicare providers, a cap on subsidy payments to wealthier farmers and an increase to $4,600 in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students.
Bush's proposal, totaling almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, will kick off a major debate with the new Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats are sure to press for more money for domestic programs, and they've signaled they won't consider renewing Bush's tax cuts until closer to 2010, when they are to expire.
The White House plan will produce a surplus in 2012, budget director Rob Portman said Friday — assuming strong growth in tax revenues, continued curbs on domestic agencies' spending and relatively modest cuts to farm programs, Medicare and the Medicaid health care program for the poor and disabled.
Bush's plan assumes Congress extends the two rounds of tax cuts that were passed in 2001 and 2003.
Portman said Bush's budget submission contains about a 1 percentage point cut in the rapid growth in Medicare — which averages almost 8 percent a year without changes — to squeeze about $66 billion in savings over five years from the federal health care program for the elderly.
Bush would curb payments to health care providers such as hospitals, and would require more of the higher-income recipients to pay greater premiums.
"We need to get these unsustainable growth rates under control," Portman said, noting that Congress passed more ambitious cuts in 1997, when President Clinton and a GOP-controlled Congress enacted more than $160 billion in Medicare savings. "This is a good first step."
However, Congress has since given back much of the 1997 savings, particularly cuts in doctors' fees. Smaller cuts proposed last year got nowhere in a Congress controlled by Republicans.
The requests, to be released Monday, would bring war spending for fiscal 2007 to about $170 billion, with the $145 billion for 2008 representing a decline.
The additional request for the current year includes $93.4 billion for the Pentagon and $6 billion for foreign aid and State Department costs — on top of $70 billion approved by Congress in September.
The White House assumes war spending will be down to $50 billion in 2009 with none planned beyond then in hopes the war in Iraq will have wound down.
Bush's recent budgets have been met with skepticism by Democrats, partly because they have left out war costs and expensive changes to the alternative minimum tax, which is hitting an increasing number of middle class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates updating the AMT for inflation would cost $93 billion in 2012 alone.
The increase in war spending — up from $120 billion approved by Congress for 2006 — have been prompted by large costs to replace equipment destroyed in combat or worn out in harsh conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Iraq requests are certain to face scrutiny by the Democrats, who already are debating whether to try to block Bush's request to increase troop levels in Baghdad.
Critics say the Pentagon is also using war-money requests to modernize the armed services with weaponry — such as the next-generation Joint Strike Fighters or the controversial V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft — unlikely to see action in Iraq or Afghanistan. The Pentagon counters that the planes are replacing aircraft that are no longer manufactured.
The additional budget request for Iraq is far below lists assembled by the military branches, which were given a green light last fall by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. He instructed the four services that they could add projects connected to the broader fight against terrorism, though critics said that could be interpreted to cover almost anything.
Those lists were met with resistance in the White House and on Capitol Hill, and the Pentagon pared them back in the request it forwarded to the White House's Office of Management and Budget, which trimmed them further.
In addition to its share of the $245 billion for the wars, the Defense Department will seek $481.4 billion to run the department for 2008 — an 11.3 percent increase over the $432 billion amount approved by Congress for this year, according to a defense official and budget documents.
That total includes about $12 billion to increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps, to meet the growing strains of fighting wars on two fronts, said the Pentagon official, who requested anonymity because the budget has not yet been released.
___
|
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 8255
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 12:42 am: |
|
Ntfs,
The GAO used to produce a Comprehensive Annual Financial Report (us Accounting geeks call them CAFR's) for the United States of America (I'll call it the CAFRUSA).
The CAFRUSA is designed to tell you where ALL of our money comes from and goes to, list the book value of all the nations assets, etc. It should be the equivalent of what you'd receive annually from companies with whom you've invested.
Couple of interesting thing about the CAFRUSA:
@ - In the +15 years the nation started publishing the CAFRUSA, the Feds have NEVER been able to score an Unqualified opinion from its CPAs of the nation's financial/accounting practices. And if you know anything about what I'm talking about, you'll note the malevolent hypocrisy of this nation (via the IRS, SEC, FDIC, FBI, etc.) imposing reporting standards on the rest of us that it itself are wholly INCAPABLE of abiding.
@ - By FAR, the most INEPTLY booked and accounted for governement agency in all the Land is the Department of Defense. Really. If you read some of the stuff auditors have said about how shabbily the DOD books are kept and reported and then read the stuff you've underlined above, you might begin to uncontrollably vomit.
@ - Note I said the GAO USED to produce a CAFRUSA. Because I've not been able to get a CAFRUSA since George W. Bush was elected President. And brotha, that AIN'T no coincidence. |
Chrishayden
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 3560
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 10:38 am: |
|
THIS is what eventually took down the Romans, the Ottoman Turks, and many other Great Powers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
February 3, 2007
Record $622 Billion Budget Requested for the Pentagon
By DAVID S. CLOUD
WASHINGTON, Feb. 2 — The Bush administration is seeking a record military budget of $622 billion for the 2008 fiscal year, Pentagon officials have said. The sum includes more than $140 billion for war-related costs.
The administration is also seeking $93 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, to pay for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, the officials said.
The requests are part of the annual budget request to Congress for all federal spending programs. The budget is to be made public on Monday, and Congress will revise it in the coming months.
Together with money for combat operations this year already approved by Congress, the new request would push spending related to Iraq and Afghanistan to $163 billion.
“It is the highest level of spending since the height of the Korean War,” said Steven Kosiak, a military budget expert with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a policy analysis organization here.
Mr. Kosiak said that in 1952 the United States spent the equivalent of $645 billion in today’s dollars, factoring in inflation, and that in the Korean War military spending exceeded 13 percent of the gross national product. The figure is now 4 percent.
With Democrats in control of Congress and opposition to the Iraq war running strong, the administration’s request may face even greater scrutiny than it has in recent years. But few if any budget experts expect significant cuts in military spending while large numbers of troops are in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In a statement, the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said: “Democrats pledge that our troops will receive everything they need to do their jobs. We will also subject this supplemental to the tough and serious oversight that Congress has ignored for four years.”
The regular Pentagon budget request for 2008, which excludes war-related costs but covers Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine costs as well as other spending, will be $481 billion, a Pentagon official said. That would be an increase of $49 billion over what Congress provided this year, Mr. Kosiak said.
“As long as we’re engaged in major military operations, you are probably not going to see decreases in the baseline budget,” he said.
The Pentagon is seeking $128.6 billion for the Army, $110.7 billion for the Air Force and $140 billion for the Navy, department officials said.Background briefings for members of Congress and their staffs have begun. As details leaked out, Pentagon officials agreed to provide an outline of the request. The officials said the budget included no cancellations of major weapons systems, despite delays and escalating costs in procurement accounts in all the services.
The $141 billion request for war-related costs in 2008 represents the first time the administration has tried at the beginning of the budget cycle to provide a total estimate for how much the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other military operations will cost a year in advance.
Congress has been pressing the administration for several years to provide such estimates. Even as they comply, Pentagon officials emphasized that actual costs could be far different, depending on the course of the wars.
The budget request, which takes many months to prepare, is being released as the administration is sending an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.
A spokesman for the Pentagon, Bryan Whitman, said Friday that that the Office of Management and Budget had estimated that the additional forces would cost $5.6 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends in September.
On Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office released its estimate, which said the costs could run much higher.
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, at a Pentagon news conference, disputed the office’s estimate, saying it greatly overstated the number of support troops that would be necessary to go along with the 21,500 increase in combat forces.
Mr. Gates also said he had recommended that President Bush nominate Adm. Timothy J. Keating of the Navy, now commander of Norad, as commander of the United States Pacific Command, making him the top commander in the Pacific, and Lt. Gen. Gene Reunart of the Air Force to head the Northern Command, which is responsible for defending the continental United States.
Home
World U.S. N.Y. / Region Business Technology Science Health Sports Opinion Arts Style Travel Jobs Real Estate Automobiles Back to Top
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
Privacy Policy Search Corrections RSS First Look Help Contact Us Work for Us Site Map
|
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 7132
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 12:15 pm: |
|
The neocons resonsible for the Iraq debacle should be taken out and executed for treason. They begot this bastard war, thinking their paper strategy could be implemented with shock and awe. Now this latter day Nero, George Bush, fiddles around while America burns with dissent and debt. IMO, only the real powers-that-be can rescue the nation from doom, and those representing wealth in the private sector will be exerting their influence via the Republican party which is who will end up putting Bush in check. Even the newly-appointed Secretary of Defense has started to hedge on the troop surge tactic. He says that the situation in Iraq is worse than a civil war, that it is chaos with 5 or 6 factions battling each other in different areas of the country. What a hornet's nest has been stirred up by a cadre of evil men gone amok. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 1735
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, February 03, 2007 - 12:57 pm: |
|
"Because I've not been able to get a CAFRUSA since George W. Bush was elected President. And brotha, that AIN'T no coincidence."
Bro, I wouldn't question that for one second! Bush and the core Bushites (Ann Culter, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al) have no problems with Draconian censorship and nefarious manipulation of facts and information. The Bushites will defend and follow their master to the deepest recesses of hell. And they will not tolerate any questioning nor criticism of their master or his disastrous policies, no matter how valid and honest it is.
|
|
Email This Page