Rep. Ellen Tauscher:  “President’s budget is a laundry list of wrong answers.”

Washington, DC – Today the President submitted his 2008 budget to Congress.  The budget reflects the Bush Administration’s priorities and details how the President would like Congress to appropriate funding for both domestic and foreign policies.  The President submitted three defense budgets: a $481.4 billion FY08 for the Department of Defense; a $141.7 billion FY08 war budget request; and a $93.4 billion FY07 supplemental request to cover this year’s remaining war costs.  Taken together, these three requests total $716.5 billion. 

“One thing is clear:  By asking for more money for his failed Iraq policy and slashing funds for important domestic programs, the President has shown once again that he doesn’t understand the reality in Iraq or the will of the American people. 

“The new Congress has been left with the debt from the spending-spree of the last six years.  We now are getting to the hard but necessary work of balancing the budget while honoring our commitment to domestic prosperity and military readiness in the face of new and emerging threats.  This will not be easy, but one thing is clear, the President’s budget is not only a poor attempt at finding common ground, it is a laundry list of wrong answers to the problems we face.”

-Rep. Ellen Tauscher