A quick roundup of comments on the President's initial budget proposal (from the MSM).
Speaker Dennis Hastert of Illinois called Bush's proposal "a good starting point." Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman said proposed cuts in community development grants, Medicaid and farm subsidies are "totally wrong."
Democrats were harsher. "The president's budget is a hoax on the American people," said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
"It's a very unrealistic budget for a document that is supposed to reflect the president's policies," said Robert L. Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan organization that lobbies for deficit reduction.
And this:
"This budget takes cops off the street, hurts veterans and punishes schoolchildren while saddling future generations with record budget deficits and mountains of debt," said Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts. "There's nothing fiscally responsible here."
"The history of proposed cuts and elimination of programs by presidents is not very good,'' Representative Mike Castle, a Delaware Republican, said in a telephone interview yesterday. ``I would be very surprised if all the cuts he's recommended actually occur.''...
"The odds of halving the deficit in the next half-decade are close to nil,'' David A. Rosenberg, Chief North American Economist at Merrill Lynch & Co., said in a letter to investors.
"Chances are we won't get the full amount of the cuts the president is looking for, but we might get some,'' Edward McKelvey, Goldman, Sachs & Co.'s senior economist, said in an interview. ``This is a very severe budget to present to the Congress. Various congressmen will say, `Not in my program.'''...
"There are plenty of reasons to believe the death of budget profligacy in Washington, D.C., is greatly exaggerated,'' Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies for the Cato Institute in Washington...
"Such budgetary legerdemain would be unprecedented and would shatter rules designed to promote some modicum of fiscal responsibility,'' the center said.
The cost of making tax cuts permanent would be exempt from existing budget-enforcement rules, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington group that studies domestic policy proposals, said on its Web site.
“He’s proposed the elimination or great reduction of 150 programs. The history of that is about four or five usually get reduced or eliminated to a substantial nature,” said Rep. Michael Castle, R-Del., a leading advocate in Congress for “pay as you go” budgeting...
“To do really serious deficit reduction, you either have to put entitlement programs on the table — and those involve some painful cuts — or you have to put revenues on the table, which means tax increases,” said Robert Bixby, chief executive of the Concord Coalition, which advocates balancing the budget. “And politicians don’t like to touch that, either.”
“Mr Bush is still failing the test of being a fiscally responsible president,” said Chris Edwards, head of fiscal studies at the Cato Institute, a Washington think-tank. “Overall spending is projected to rise 3.6 per cent in 2006 even without further money for Iraq.”...
“If the past four years tell us anything, it's that Congress may well be adding extra spending to the president's plans,” said Veronique de Rugy, at the American Enterprise Institute, a think-tank.
Well, you get the idea. But here is one optimistic review.
UPDATE: Add this take, courtesy of Calculated Risk.