Bush Hates Kids and Other Americans

The president appears to be attempting to remake his terrible image. He is suddenly concerned about fiscal responsibility -- well, unless the subject is war. The problem with the new Bush strategy is that he's going about it in precisely the wrong way. Is anyone surprised?

The Associate Press reports:

President Bush, escalating his budget battle with Congress, on Tuesday vetoed a spending measure for health and education programs prized by congressional Democrats.

He also signed a big increase in the Pentagon's non-war budget although the White House complained it contained "some unnecessary spending."

Bush vetoed a $606 billion health and education bill, his sixth veto. Congress has only been able to override one of them, a politically popular water projects measure. The president claims that Democrats are acting like a teenager with a new credit card.

Hummmm ... the Democrats want to spend money on health care and education? What teenager would want to spend their money on THAT?

The president, on the other hand, IS spending money like a teenager -- wanting it for war games, like $6.3 billion for the next-generation F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, $2.8 billion for the Navy's DD(X) destroyer and $3.1 billion for the new Virginia-class attack submarine.

The pesky Democrats want to spend tax dollars on things like:

• a 20 percent increase over Bush's request for job training programs.
  
  
• $1.4 billion more than Bush's request for health research at the National Institutes of Health, a 5 percent increase.
  
  
• $2.4 billion for heating subsidies for the poor, $480 million more than Bush requested.
  
  
• $665 million for grants to community action agencies; Bush sought to kill the program outright.
  
  
• $63.6 billion for the Education Department, a 5 percent increase over 2007 spending and 8 percent more than Bush sought.
  
  
• a $225 million increase for community health centers.

The nerve of them .... geezzz!

Since winning re-election, Bush has sought to cut the labor, health and education measure below the prior year level. But lawmakers have rejected the cuts. The budget that Bush presented in February sought almost $4 billion in cuts to this year's bill.

Democrats responded by adding $10 billion to Bush's request for the 2008 bill. Democrats say spending increases for domestic programs are small compared with Bush's pending war request totaling almost $200 billion. [...]

The $471 billion defense budget gives the Pentagon a 9 percent, $40 billion budget increase. The measure only funds core department operations, omitting Bush's $196 billion request for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, except for an almost $12 billion infusion for new troop vehicles that are resistant to roadside bombs.

As my good friend Tengrain, at Mock, Paper, Scissors, would say .... Impeach the mutha already!