Scandalous...Disappointed...Surprised: Republicans on the 2007 Budget

By Lee Russ

Tuesday, February 07, 2006 at 03:46 PM

The "scandalous" is from Arlen Specter.  "Disappointed" and "surprised" come from Olympia Snowe.  The details come from the Guardian's story on congressional reaction to the details of the President's proposed 2007 budget.

GOP legislators, especially those with a conscience and those up for election in 2006, have plenty of reason to scream about the 2007 budget submitted by President Bush.  It reflects a rather drastic reduction in spending for programs like Medicaid and Medicare, not to mention for Transportation and the Department of Justice.  All at a time that the public--the voters--is hearing about making tax cuts permanent and millions of dollars being thrown around from one Republican corruptician to another Republican corruptician.

The Guardian's story begins:

President Bush, constrained by wars, hurricanes and exploding budget deficits, has sent Congress a 2007 spending plan that is garnering howls of pain from farmers, teachers, doctors and a wide array of other groups with special interests.

Democrats, as expected, pronounced the Republican president's budget plan dead on arrival. But many Republicans were equally sharp in their reservations about the $2.77 trillion spending blueprint the administration unveiled on Monday.
...
Nine Cabinet agencies would see outright reductions with the biggest percentage cuts occurring in the departments of Transportation, Justice and Agriculture.

And it should be no surprise that, as Raw Story reports, the 2007 budget omits a table that was in the 2006 budget, which delineates the impact of the budget policies on the deficit.