The folks down at the Houston Chronicle aren’t exactly legal scholars. In complaining about the budget deficit, they attack the president for following the Constitution:
Furthermore, the budget figures do not take into account the hundreds of billions of dollars the nation will spend fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Following long custom, the administration has budgeted not a single dollar to pay for future combat operations, even in the middle of a global struggle against determined enemies.
It’s not merely "long custom." It’s the supreme law of the land. Let’s go to the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have power…
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
But constitutional law isn’t the only discipline where the Chron’s editors fail. They’re also lousy at arithmetic, as illustrated by this claim:
In the last five years, federal spending has added $3 trillion to the national debt.
Actual Federal budget deficits for the last five years are as follows (in millions of dollars):
- 2001: -32,445
- 2002: -317,417
- 2003: -538,418
- 2004: -567,961
- 2005: -493,611
Add those up and you get less than $2 trillion, a far cry from the $3 trillion the editors claim.
Filed Under Uncategorized · · · · 
Print This Post
··
Comments
24 Responses to “Chron slams Bush for obeying Constitution”Search
Our Sponsors
Poll
Loading ...
Add those up and you get less than $2 trillion, a far cry from the $3 trillion the editors claim.
it’s still too much
Oh, I absolutely agree. Overall, I agree with the conclusions of the editorial — the Bush administration has been atrocious on spending.
I just wish the Chron’s editors had paid attention in civics and math.
The deficit is still no reason to pop any
champagne corks just yet. There is no spin cycle that can clean this news up.
I found Bush’s “The deficit is not as bad as we thought it would be.” humorous.
I just wish the politicians in Washington (Democrat and Republican) had spent the money like it was coming out of their pockets.
Oh well, fiscal conservatives are becoming endangered species, especially in the Republican Party.
Simple
The Chronicle can make an error and I can easiliy live with it. Washington’s errors, Well I have to pay for them.
here’s the difference between Dems and Repubs…
Dems spend other people’s money on things they won’t spend their own money on.
Repubs spend other people’s money on things they WOULD spend their own money on, but don’t have to because they can use other people’s money.
Agreed! ‘to cut or to curb spending’ one of the main items in the party platform has been completely ignored. This is the biggets letdown. They have ignored the principles of the conservative party. They turned their back on the people who elected them. Now, I grant you, the war against terror is costing us an arm and a leg but so is Illegal immigration. Oversight about the money being spent is absent,waste and fraud seem to be all too common. But then you have to think that the democrats are much worse. As to the chronicle people, well! logical thinking is not a trait of the Lefties.
kraut
the dems offer no alternatives to anything. they have moved further left.
the repubs have moved more left.
this leaves the conservatives no choices.
where is a conservative to go? i am confused.
this is true at all levels of government. but at the state level i will vote for some dems just to get the rinos out.
This misses the forest for the trees.
The faulty arithmetic and sloppy research of the Chronicle is humorous, the out of control spending going on in DC (under GOP leadership) borders on the criminal (ethically at least).
I guess it’s easier to poke fun at the daily rag (again) than to face the fact that our elected officials are the real problem facing the American citizenry today.
Hell, a trillion here and a trillion there. Sooner or later you will be talking about some real money.
Fact is our gov is out of control and this North American Union thing is crazy. Amero? I dont F’n think so. Why does GWB and our Governor want this? They have money already and big houses. I cant see any benefit to us other than helping the Mexican and Canadian economies by hurting ours.
The only reasonable explanation of this is our leaders have been body snatched by aliens and this is all some master plan to make a long enough runway for their space ships to land so they can resort back to their alien forms and eat all humans while they take over the planet. Makes sense to me.
No more graphing calculators for the Chronicle! Maybe they need eye exams as well. Math is not emphasized when you major in liberal arts.
the Bush administration has been atrocious on spending.
I think atrocious is too strong, especially when you view spending as a percentage of GDP.
Now, some people may not like the reforms, but spending was the price of getting reforms such as No Child Left Behind and Medical Savings Accounts. Without increased spending, you don’t get those reforms. MSA’s in particular are a very important reform.
I don’t expect the Chronicle editorialists to comprehend that, but I do expect them to check their facts on occasion. I’m not sure why I expect that at this point.
All entities strive to grow. This includes government. It is up to us to restrict its food.
I have noticed many so-called journalists and a large majority of citizens do not remember their high school government classes. It is plain those courses were a waste of time and tax money. All the knowledge in the world is of no avail if one is not taught to think. Thinking in a rational manner is not something that comes naturally. One must be trained to it. “They” say; All men are equal in the eyes of God. not
Clinton’s $5.6 trillion dollars in surplus was a big hoax.
Clinton’s “Surplus” was only a PROJECTION that they wish will happen in 2011
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=2727&sequence=2
Even democrat Pete DeFazio said it was a “Phony Budget Surplus”
http://www.house.gov/defazio/iss-budgetphonysurplus.shtml
Rep. Adam Smith said
http://www.house.gov/apps/list/hearing/wa09_smith/990819op.html
..but the press wont call the democrats when they claim there was a surplus
Once again we have gone down the path of trying to “pin the blame” and not focusing on “solving the problem”.
Our budget problems are not a Republican or Democrat problem; this is an “OUR” problem!
Demonizing one side or the other does not move toward a solution.
But, then again I could be wrong.
Simple
The only deficit the Democrats ever hated was one they didn’t create themselves. Now had the Democrats been in charge on 9/11 and continued to hold the White House and Congress, we would not have had this outrageous military spending because we would not have fought the war on terror. However, they would have spent the money on something else, and our economy would have collapsed by now from multiple terrorist attacks - which John Kerry would find as a nuisance.
Again, the only viable solution is to find real conservatives to run in the GOP…Edd, step up to the plate. You have the credentials, some money, and alot of friends. Paul, time for you to run for LtGov in the next election.
#13 simple,
Go ahead, solve our problem! I’m waiting for a solution from YOU!
Mr. SauerKraut
Gee, your challange has totally disarmed me! I am almost ready to commit an act of self-urination.
I start working on the deficit by doing the following:
As President (like you would vote for me)
1. Use the veto power to stop any bill stuffed with those riders that carry the pork for individual districts pet projects. Line item veto is so messy. I would rather send the congress back to do the job right in the first place.
2. Veto bills like the last highway bill and tell the congress to go back and bring me a bill without the pork.
As a representative:
Propose only spending legislation for items where there is a genuine need. It is sort of the way things operate at my house. We purchase the things we need first and if there is any discretionary money left, then we look at the items we want.
I would only vote for legislation where there is an obvious need and where that spending falls within the commonsense role of the federal government. This act alone would make me a very lonly person in Washington.
The latter is a little tough, since we have been arguing about what the role and limits of the federal government should be since the document was written.
Simple
The line-item veto is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court decided
that Congress did not have the authority to hand that power to the president.
The 6-3 ruling said that the Constitution gives a president only two choices:
either sign legislation or send it back to Congress
#16 simple,
sounds good! did you contact your reps and tell them?
Simple:
Nice platform.
You are definitely correct about how lonely you would be in DC, if anything you might be understimating the extent of your lonliness.
If you were elected POTUS and carried out your agenda, then you’d need both a strong will and a helluva PR staff to survive.
Good luck!
Kevin
First of all show me in the US Constitution that the federal government should be involved in these “programs” at all. You cannot. So aside from that I move along.
NCLB is an abysmal failure just a few years out of the gate. The regulations are so rife with holes that there are entire schools that are ignored in the acceptable performance survey. More throwing money at the problem that has existed for 40 years with no hope of correcting the basic problem of teaching kids to read write and do math.
Bush has created a completely new entitlement program in the prescription pill program. The cost for that happy entitlement has grown exponentially since its inception.
Bush has not cut nor vetoed one spending bill. The last so called transportation bill was so full of pork even congress was laughing about it.
I think “atrocious” is a more than appropriate description of Bush spending. When I hear the word
“reform” come out a politicians mouth I begin to fear for my financial bottom line.
Simple
#16
Gets my vote.
When you have a liberal newspaper, which most of them are, they will always blame Bush. Whenever I’m approached on the street or in a store to start subscribing to the Chronicle, I say, “You’ve got to be kidding.”
#23) Don’t kill the messenger. Look to the problem itself.
17 LTC We don’t need a line item veto. We just need a President with enough guts to use the whole veto power and send bills back to the Congress.
18 Kraut On a regular basis and I am sure that many of my letters (old days) and e-mails (finally got modern) ended up being discarded.
I may be a little soft on some social issues, but I am a bonofide fiscal conservative and believe that the role of government should be limited. I will take care of me and government should take care of the defense, borders, interstate commerce and the rest of the things spelled out in the constitution.
Simple