President Bush said on Saturday that his upcoming budget proposal would emphasize restraint on domestic spending while putting defense and war costs for Iraq and Afghanistan as the top priority.The Pentagon budget, including a detailed request for war funding in 2008, will hit $623 billion, according to a senior Defense official. That total includes $481 billion for the military's normal annual budget, a 10% increase over this year's spending.
At the same time, Bush will ask for substantial cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the government's main healthcare programs.
The current United States military budget is larger than the military budgets of the next fourteen biggest spenders combined, and nearly seven times larger than the official budget of second-place spender China.
Meanwhile, Forty-seven million Americans are without health insurance, dependent on the emergency room, or getting no care at all, and millions of older Americans are confronting a break in their Medicare drug coverage that will require them to pay the full cost of their prescriptions or face the painful prospect of going without.
"Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat," said a Whitehouse spokesperson. "We can do without butter, but despite all our love of peace, not without arms."
4 comments:
Just stumbled onto your blog, I hope to come back often. So without further ado....
I can understand the large difference in spending for our military versus everyone else. We are the only nation willing to go to war alone if we need to. We are also the nation the UN calls on to enforce its resolutions. Both of those reasons are going to require a large military.
As far as health care, when does it become the individuals responsibility to get their own health care? I often hear numbers thrown around regarding the number of people in the US without health care. Those numbers include people in their 20's who don't believe they need health care. It also includes people to lazy to go out and find health care, they just want the government to give it to them.
You gotta be kidding me, Andy! Did you even _look_ at the defense spending chart? It's so wacked-out that it'll make your head spin, and there is NO justification for it whatsoever. Not when our grandparents, the 'Greatest Generation' have to go without medicine. You call them lazy? Come down from your ivory tower and take a look at people leaving the pharmacies in tears because they can't afford to pay for perscriptions.
How can you have such misplaced priorities?
Lets be serious for one minute. When was the last time you actually saw anyone leaving a drug store because they couldn't afford their prescriptions? And yes, I know people first hand who want health care and have not gone out and looked for it. That is lazy. There is nothing that says the government has to provide you health care. If you want it, go get it.
Andy,
My Dad hit the donut hole last month. He can afford to pay out of pocket, but many of the fixed income retirees in his community have to choose between meds and groceries.
The plan requires Medicare beneficiaries whose total drug costs reach $2250 to pay 100% of prescription costs until $3600 is spent out of pocket. This coverage gap is known as the "Donut Hole." While this coverage gap will not affect all program participants, many will find themselves without prescription drug coverage for this portion of the plan.
You can go into any elderly community and ask, they will all share with you the tales of woe.
As for 'going out and looking for" health insurance... what, do you think it grows on trees? Have you priced it out? My 20 y/o daughter took a hiatus from college for a semester and no longer qualifies for my health insurance.
We went out and looked for and found health insurance for her, but the premiums are more than we can afford. It'd be cheaper to pay the college tuition and let her flunk out, just to keep her on my employers plan.
To suggest that the main reason people don't have access to health care is because they are "lazy" is outrageous.
You're not a Netvocates 'pay-per-blog' employee, are you?
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