$3 Trillion and Counting

The media previews of the president's budget request seem to have been mostly right: President Bush is proposing a $3 trillion budget with a $400 billion deficit, along with cuts to Medicare and Medicaid to control costs and offset increases in national defense and the economic stimulus package. The budget document is a lot to plow through, but if you want to get started, this is where you can go straight to the source.

One thing to remember is that the president's budget request never, ever gets enacted exactly as submitted. And that's even more likely this time, given that the president's a lame duck and this is an election year. The most probable outcome is a "placeholder" budget to get the government through the current year and into the next administration without undue fuss.

The other thing to remember is to keep your eye on the big picture. Amazingly enough, the fact that this is the first $3 trillion federal budget is not the big picture. In this case, the big picture means the long-term picture. The fact that the deficit is rising is ugly, without question. But the uglier facts are that we're $9 trillion in debt and facing $50 trillion in obligations for Medicare and Social Security that we have no real plan to solve. The implications of that are pretty frightening. Everybody in Washington knows this; very few seem prepared to deal with it. But you should be. When you're deciding how to vote, take a hard look at what the candidates are saying, where our money is actually spent, and what the options might be. Because the fact is, very little gets done in this world without money, and money is going to play a big role in deciding what can be done no matter who wins the election.