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The President's Budget for 2003 Recognizes the New Realities Confronting Our Nation

 
February 11, 2002

The President's budget for 2003 recognizes the new realities confronting our nation, and funds the war against terrorism and the defense of our homeland. I have confidence that when the Bush Administration crafted their budget proposal they planned to fight and win this war. In this war, our first priority must be the security of our homeland. The President's budget provides the resources to combat terrorism at home, to protect our people, and preserve our constitutional freedoms.

 

America's military, which has fought so boldly and decisively in Afghanistan, must be further strengthened so they can effectively defeat terrorism around the world. The 2003 budget requests the biggest increase in defense spending in 20 years, to pay the cost of the war and the price of transforming our Cold War military into an equipped 21st Century fighting force.

 

At home we must make restoring health to our economy a top priority. While the economy was weakening over a year before September 11th, the terrorist attack dealt it another severe blow. The 2003 budget advances a bipartisan economic recovery plan that provides greater unemployment benefits, and a plan to speed strong economic growth, generation of jobs, and giving unemployed Americans the dignity and security of a paycheck instead of an unemployment check.

 

The plan also calls for maintaining low tax rates, restraint in government spending, promoting a sound energy policy, and funding key priorities in education, health, and compassionate social programs.

 

Mitchell Daniels, director of the budget office, recently wrote, "the budget debate ahead will measure our wisdom and our will to respond to this latest lethal threat to American lives and liberty. But it will also test our maturity as a democracy, our ability to put first things first, and our understanding of the assignment history has given us."

 

His quote effectively describes these extraordinary times and the challenges ahead.

 

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