When the President released his budget Monday, he was quoted as saying, “all budgets have got to be based on priorities.” I agree with the President that the budget we implement must be priority-driven and fiscally responsible. But I have to question his priorities when his budget calls for the elimination of 150 government programs while at the same time, requests that Congress make his tax cuts permanent.  

Many of the programs the President wants to eliminate in his budget are vital to Arkansas’s working families. Under the President’s budget, federal payments to crop and dairy producers would be slashed by $587 million next year and $5.7 billion over the next decade!  And despite the fact that there are 45 million Americans today who lack access to affordable health care, the President wants to cut $60 billion from Medicaid, which millions of elderly and disabled Americans, including 717,000 Arkansans, depend on to provide critical health care services.  

As our nation welcomes home more veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, the President’s budget raises veterans’ health care costs by slashing $2 billion from the services veterans’ organizations estimate they need.  The President’s budget also imposes new co-payments on prescription drugs and enrollment fees that will ultimately cost veterans hundreds of millions of dollars.  This is no way to thank our brave men and women in uniform for all the sacrifices they have made.  

As a Member of the conservative Blue Dog Coalition that promotes fiscal discipline within our nation’s government, I am glad the President has set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009. However, I have to wonder how he plans to accomplish this. While he tightens the belt of domestic spending by making massive cuts to numerous programs, his budget fails to factor in inevitable upcoming costs including the cost of his expensive Social Security plan and his impending funding requests for Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the President is expected to ask Congress for an additional $80 billion in funding for Iraq and Afghanistan this month, but his budget does not take this into account. 

I believe if Congress employed fiscally-responsible principles such as requiring that every bill contain an estimated cost before a vote is allowed and requiring Congress to pass a balanced budget every year, Congress and America would be much better off. 

Finally, the President’s budget calls for making his tax cuts permanent.  I have supported tax cuts in the past, when our country was not deficit spending and we were not at war. In fact, if the President were to repeal the tax cuts he gives to the top one percent of income earners, the savings generated by repealing those tax cuts would essentially pay to fix Social Security! 

But for the President to recommend making his tax cuts permanent on the backs of our hardworking families, many of whom heavily depend on programs President Bush’s budget eliminates, is fiscally and morally wrong. As Congress debates the budget for the upcoming fiscal year, I will fight to retain the programs critical to the people of Arkansas.