The Political Voices of Women

The Bush $3.1 Trillion Budget Proposal Makes Me Sick! — by Catherine Morgan

Our president has submitted his 3.1 TRILLION DOLLAR budget today (aka: His final nail in the coffin, of what was the U.S. economy). Let’s take a closer look at it. The Pentagon’s proposed budget, for instance, is $515.4 billion, an increase of 7.5 percent over this year, meaning that military spending would be the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II.

So, just for the Pentagon (and this does not include money for the war in Iraq) 515.4 billion dollars. Can you imagine how much money that is? Probably not. To give you a small example, I found this graphic of what $315 billion looks like.

This pile is 125 feet wide, 200 feet deep, and 450 feet tall.

450 feet is the height of a 38-story building. It’s the hieght of the Millenium Wheel in London. It is also the height of the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas and the Louisiana State Capitol Building.

If you were to stack the money in a single stack, your stack would be 19,887 miles tall, enough to wrap the Moon at its equator almost 3 times.

Check out this video of what a billion dollars looks like.

But…This is a 3.1 Trillion Dollar Budget, and this image is of $315 billion. How many $315 billions does it take to make $3.1 trillion?

All this money is suppose to make us safe…

”Two key principles guided the development of my budget — keeping America safe and ensuring our continued prosperity,” Bush said in his budget message to Congress.

So. How safe are we? Are we experiencing “continued prosperity”? I think history will find this president to have been delusional.

Even worse than what Bush wants to spend money on, is where he intends to take money from…

CRUEL DOMESTIC CUTS: To maintain his tax cuts for the wealthy, Bush’s budget slashes 151 domestic programs. Poison control centers face a 62 percent cut, rural health programs are decimated 87 percent, and the Community Services Block Grant, “a $654 million program that provides housing, nutrition, education and job services to low-income people,” is completely eliminated.

A new health program for 9/11 rescue workers is slashed by 77 percent, “even though the administration has said that many workers were exposed to ‘unprecedented levels of risk’ for lung disease and other illnesses.” The budget slices 22 percent from the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. “The White House wants to eliminate spending for more than a dozen education programs, including Even Start, which promotes family literacy; grants to the states for classroom technology; Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, for needy undergraduates; and a scholarship program named for the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia.” “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would lose more than $430 million, including…$28 million from chronic disease prevention and health promotion. A $301 million program that trains 4,700 pediatricians and pediatric specialists at children’s teaching hospitals also would be eliminated, at a time when pediatric specialties, such as rheumatology and pulmonology, face critical shortages.” The Safe and Drug-Free Schools Program loses $194 million, a cut of 64 percent, and “states and cities would see cuts of $1.5 billion from the $3.75 billion in grants for security, law enforcement, firefighters and emergency medical teams approved by Congress for this year.”

What other bloggers are saying…

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