BUSH'S 2005 BUDGET

I'm not a budget expert--or even a budget entusiast--and I won't pretend to know anything about the budget, deficits, or non-discretionary spending. I leave that to the experts.

I do know that I had to truck over to the JEC yesterday on my lunch hour to pick up a couple of copies of the budget for people at my office. I do know that one copy consisted of four ginormous bound volumes--in sum bigger than an unabridged dictionary--with an addendum and files of historical budget tables on a CD-ROM.

I don't care how many monkeys Bush has working at how many typewriters, it takes a lot of time and energy to run the economic models, to write the text, to compile all this information together in one place where it can be formatted, edited, sent to publication, and delivered from the printer so it could be released yesterday morning.

I can offer my trademark GLOBALIZE THIS! 100% money back guarantee that the budget numbers had been crunched and the publication process was well under way back in December when the administration was claiming its PhRMA and HMO ghost written Medicare plan would cost us only a smooth $395 billion (not the $540 billion projected in this budget). A classic bait and switch, and a favorite in the Bush administration play book.

How many times can they get away with these lies? Sooner or later reality will catch up. But, man, these guys got more teflon than John Gotti.