A (very incomplete) roundup from around the blogosphere.
What isn't in the President's proposal catches the eye of Kash at Angry Bear.
The brand-new White House budget proposal for 2006 contains some interesting details. One of them is this: the White House is not requesting, or planning for, any reform of the AMT system in this budget. As such, it may represent a backhanded way of effectively repealing the Bush tax cuts.
With such budget strictness emanating from Bush, we can rest easy about the budget deficit. At this rate, I'm sure that the budget deficit stands a pretty good chance of being completely eliminated sometime in the next 50 years.
And William Polley finds this:
From the section on the ownership society:
the President has proposed Retirement Savings Accounts, which would replace the complex array of retirement saving incentives currently in the tax code, such as IRAs, Roth IRAs, and similar saving vehicles. The President has also proposed Employer Retirement Savings Accounts to simplify the saving opportunities individuals have through their employers.
I had to read that twice. He says "replace" IRAs and Roth IRAs. The Lifetime Savings Accounts and Individual Development Accounts are noble ideas...
Then he better make sure that whatever is replacing the Roth IRA will actually achieve the goals of increasing saving for the middle class, and that it is progressive (i.e. gives incentives and tax breaks for low income families). If he can do this, I'm on board. But the Roth IRA is such a good idea that I would be careful about what I replace it with.
And some "well wishes."
As for all the spending cuts. Good luck!
Brad Delong runs down some bad reviews from the National Journal's Stan Collender who says
It's hard to believe, but a phrase that hasn't been used since Bill Clinton was sending his proposed budgets to a GOP-controlled House and Senate was actually used by a number of Republicans yesterday, just hours after President Bush's 2006 budget was sent to Capitol Hill: "dead on arrival."...
[F]iscal policy still does not appear to be a high priority for the Bush administration....
and a similarly glum assessment from Cato's Bill Niskanen.
At Calculated Risk, we get an unfavorable comparison to the CBO benchmark path.
All of the headlines are touting Bush's spending cuts for his fiscal 2006 budget proposals. ..
For fiscal 2006, Bush is proposing $2.57 Trillion in spending as compared to the CBO forecast (table 1-2) of $2.507 Trillion ... another $63 Billion.
As I've pointed out before, the budget deficits will probably far exceed those forecast by the CBO.
Victor at Dead Parrot Society, though skeptical, provisionally like what he sees.
Regardless, these [proposals] strike me as particularly optimistic. If Bush can do this, he will have more than earned my vote.
(And thanks for the link to this site, Victor. You're out there all alone on that one too. Well, maybe not completely -- Alex at Marginal Revolution expresses a similar sentiment.)
Nouriel Roubini, on the other hand, is, let's say, unimpressed.
The dishonesty of the administration about budget deficits has reached levels unheard of. These folks have absolutely no shame...
How do they create the false $233b deficit by 2009?
1. They assume spending cuts that are, by any historical and political standard, impossible to achieve.
2. They assume revenue growth that is altogether wishful thinking and false based on current trends. And they do not consider the long-run costs of making all the Bush tax cuts permanent.
3. They do not count the ongoing costs of the continued defense and homeland security spending and of future military and homeland security build-ups.
4. They phase-in a budget busting social security privatization (that will cost alone $4.5 trillion in the next 20 years) only starting in 2009.This is worse than dishonesty; it is the most squalid manipulation of budgets ever seen aimed at pretending to achieve a budget figure that is utterly unrealistic and false in every possible dimension.
Ok. I'm going back to that post and see if I can figure out what Nouriel really thinks.
More to come, no doubt.
UPDATE: Max Sawicky weighs in here. You probably already know what his opinion is, but here's a snapshot:
This is not an austere budget, even if one confines one's attention to non-defense discretionary spending. There is more shifting of the deck chairs than net reduction. The cuts are painful and unmeritorious, but they do not reflect any sort of fiscal retrenchment in overall terms. In the latter sense, they reflect a deliberate misfocus.