ADMINISTRATION
Bush's Cruel Budget

President Bush will unveil his budget for fiscal year 2009 today. During last week's State of the Union address, Bush declared that he would put the nation on track to a balanced budget in 2012, claiming, "American families have to balance their budgets, and so should their Government." But under Bush's proposal, "the budget deficit would jump sharply, from $163 billion in 2007 to about $400 billion in 2008 and 2009. ... Such deficits would rival the record deficit of $412 billion of 2004." Bush's tax cuts have been the single largest contributor to the reemergence of substantial budget deficits in recent years. Though the budget includes needed increases in funding for the State Children's Health Insurance Program and the Food and Drug Administration, it also slashes over 100 domestic programs. Bush took office in 2001 facing a projected $5.6 trillion surplus over the next ten years, but his enormous deficits "will absolutely bedevil the next administration," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-ND).

HEALTH CARE SLASHED: Bush's budget will include $170 billion in cuts to Medicare over the next five years and will also cut $1.2 billion from Medicaid next year "and nearly $14 billion over five years." Most of the Medicare savings in the budget would be achieved "by reducing the annual update in federal payments to hospitals, nursing homes, hospices, ambulances and home care agencies." The largest savings "by far" come from cutting funding to hospitals, even as hospitals are closing across the country. (Three hundred fewer public hospitals exist today than 15 years ago.) William Dombi, vice president of the National Association for Home Care and Hospice, said that under Bush's budget, "75 percent to 80 percent of home health agencies would be doomed. They would not be able to meet payroll. They would not be able to operate." House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said, "The President's cuts are exactly the wrong medicine when the cost of health care and the number of uninsured continue to rise and families are feeling economically insecure."

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."

UNPRECEDENTED MILITARY SPENDING: With the Pentagon's 2009 budget increased to $515.4 billion, "annual military spending, when adjusted for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War II." The budget gives the Pentagon a $35 billion increase over last year, "about 7 percent, with war costs additional." This enormous budget includes a $70 billion "bridge fund" to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year. "Since coming to office, the administration has increased baseline military spending by 30 percent over all," including "$600 billion already approved in supplemental budgets to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for counterterrorism operations." Separate from the $515.4 billion, Bush's budget also calls for $21 billion for nuclear weapons programs. Center for American Progress Senior Fellow LawrenceKorb writes that the United States could "safely trim $60 billion" from Bush's Pentagon budget, including saving $13 billion by reducing the nuclear arsenal.

Under the Radar

ADMINISTRATION -- BOOK EXPOSES 9/11 COMMISSION DIRECTOR'S TIES TO ROVE: Former executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, exchanged phone calls with the White House -- including four with Karl Rove -- during the panel's 20-month long investigation, according to a new book by New York Times reporter Philop Shenon. The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, available tomorrow, asserts that Zelikow "once tried to push through wording in a draft report that suggested a greater tie between al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Iraq, in line with White House claims but not with the commission staff's viewpoint." According to the book, Zelikow failed to inform the commission at the time he was hired that he was instrumental in helping personal friend and then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice set up Bush's National Security Council in 2001. Some panel staffers believe Zelikow stopped them from submitting a report depicting Rice's performance prior to 9/11 as "amount[ing] to incompetence." In a statement, Zelikow "acknowledged talking to Rove and Rice during the course of the commission's work despite his general pledge not to," though he denied the conversations concerned his work on the panel.

ECONOMY -- BIG OIL COMPANIES ANNOUNCE RECORD PROFITS: Last week, Royal Dutch Shell announced that profits for the company soared to $26.7 billion in 2007, a record-breaking figure for a European company. The next day, The New York Times reported that "Exxon Mobil's performance last year was a blowout." The oil giant revealed last Friday "that it beat its own record for the highest profits ever recorded by any company, with net income rising 3 percent to $40.6 billion." Exxon Mobil's sales exceeded the gross domestic product of 120 countries. From the beginning of President Bush's tenure in office, the combined profits of the big five oil companies have skyrocketed from just under $40 billion in 2001 to $120 billion in 2007. As Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz recently noted in Vanity Fair, "The soaring price of oil is clearly related to the Iraq war. The issue is not whether to blame the war for this but simply how much to blame it." 

RADICAL RIGHT -- GLOBAL WARMING DENIER GROUP HOSTING CONFERENCE FUNDED BY BIG OIL: From March 2-4, right-wing climate change-denial group The Heartland Institute will host what it calls a "Climate Skeptics" Conference. Heartland President Joseph Blast boasted that his conference would feature climate change deniers: "This is their chance to speak out." The online poster for the conference declares, "Global Warming is not a crisis!" Heartland's environmental stance is completely out of the mainstream, as the debate over human contribution to global warming is long over. Even as some top conservative presidential candidates recently endorsed California's effort to reduce auto greenhouse gas emissions, Heartland ridiculed the idea, calling California and its allies "environmental extremists." Heartland's extreme anti-environmentalism no doubt originates from its supporters. Between 1998 and 2005, oil giant Exxon Mobil gave nearly $800,000 to Heartland. The organization's board of directors includes Thomas Walton, Director of Economic Policy at General Motors, and James L. Johnson, formerly senior economist for oil company Amoco Corporation. As RealClimate notes, "Normal scientific conferences have the goal of discussing ideas and data in order to advance scientific understanding. Not this one."

Think Fast

The New York Times writes that the Sunday morning public affairs shows "are careless about bias." Their "experts are supposed to be impartial, but it is left to viewers to parse their complicated pedigrees and entwined political obligations. It's not that they have nothing to say, it's that what they say is not accompanied by an asterisk."

60 percent: Americans who "think the economy's already in a recession," while "two-thirds doubt that a government stimulus package will soften the blow," according to a new ABC News/Washington Post poll. In total, 81 percent believe the economy is “in bad shape, the most since 1993."

The White House will release its FY 2009 budget today. CQ reports that the document is "expected to project a deficit in the $400 billion range for fiscal 2008 and 2009. That would be more than double the $163 billion in red ink from fiscal 2007."

"The cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined could rise to just under $900 billion by next spring and could near the $1 trillion mark by the end of 2009." Congress has authorized $691 billion in war spending since 2001.

Speaking to a crowd in Florida over the weekend, Karl Rove admitted that he was a "bit of a hothead" while working for President Bush. Rove also compared Bush to President Lincoln in his ability to "get to the nub of the thing." 

Three of Wall Street's biggest investment banks -- Citigroup, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley -- will announce today that they are "imposing new environmental standards that will make it harder for companies to get financing to build coal-fired power plants in the U.S."

Housing Secretary Alphonso Jackson allegedly retaliated against the Philadelphia Housing Authority after it refused to "transfer a $2 million public property to a developer" who is a business friend of Jackson’s "at a substantial discount." The authority’s director says he received "dozens" of "menacing" threats from Jackson's aides over an 11-month period.

American forces "accidentally killed nine Iraqi civilians and wounded three" in a strike aimed at Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. The attack "appeared to be one of the deadliest cases of mistaken identity in recent weeks." Some victims had "contracted with the American military to fight Al Qaeda."

And finally: Yesterday, the "Patriots' streak was broken, but Anheuser-Busch's was not." It "aired the best-liked Super Bowl ad for a record 10th-consecutive year," with a commercial featuring a Dalmatian training a Clydesdale to make the beer wagon team. (Watch the ad here.)

Good News

"[I]t appeared increasingly likely at the end of last week that enough Republicans might vote with Democrats at least to make sure seniors and veterans received tax rebate checks" in a stimulus package being negotiated in the Senate.

State Watch

OREGON: "Gay couples in Oregon will be allowed to register as domestic partners, a federal judge ruled Friday."

FLORIDA: "LGBT civil rights groups said Saturday they will mount an aggressive campaign to defeat a proposed amendment to the state constitution that would ban same-sex marriage."

EDUCATION: Some universities are banning money from tobacco companies.

Blog Watch

THINK PROGRESS: Defense Secretary Robert Gates spins increased violence in Afghanistan as a "manifestation" that the Taliban "has lost."

MEDIA MATTERS: Conservative radio host Neal Boortz blames problems after Hurricane Katrina on "the worthless parasites who lived in New Orleans."

CLIMATE PROGRESS: Exxon Mobil and other big oil companies saw record profits in 2007.

FUND RACE: Find out to which political candidates your friends are contributing.

Daily Grill

"Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) has sought to enforce a tougher ethical standard in the 110th Congress."
-- Roll Call, 5/10/07

VERSUS

"Rep. John T. Doolittle, R-Calif., reported in a filing made available Thursday that his legal expense fund had received $5,000 from Boehner's leadership PAC."
-- CQ, 1/10/08