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Friday, September 23, 2005
2001 & 2003 Tax Cuts to Cost $225 Billion This Year
In an op-ed in today's Washington Post, E.J. Dionne, Jr. notes that although Republicans claim to be fiscally conservative, "our federal purse strings are in the hands of fiscal radicals." Spending in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina does have lawmakers on both sides of the aisle worried about potentially massive deficits. Some have been claiming a desire to take a fiscally responsible approach to spending, however cutting budgets while ignoring the costs of tax cuts is, in the long-run, not fiscally responsible at all.
As was posted yesterday in the blog, members of the House Republican Study Committee proposed drastic funding cuts in order to offset Katrina spending; cuts that would -- as Dionne said -- take "$80 billion from Medicare and $50 billion from Medicaid over five years and suggest reductions in school lunches, rent subsidies for the poor and foreign aid, among other things." He goes on to point out, however, that the amount of money the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts is costing our country this year alone amounts to $225 billion -- which could more than cover the expected costs of dealing with Katrina.
It doesn't, however, look like the Republican leadership is interested in pursuing this route to offset the costs of Katrina. Yesterday Bush pledged to join in on efforts to identify cuts elsewhere in the federal budget that can offset the expenditures for disaster aid, saying "I'm going to work with Congress to prioritize what may need to be cut." Cutting programs is the opposite of what needs to be done. In fact, many are arguing that a perpetual underinvestment in the infrastructure of our country is what allowed this disaster to spiral so radically out of hand in the first place.
Posted by Becky Lewis
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