Fiscal responsibility my #@$

The republicans have started the new year right for them anyway by cutting the budget for "entitlement programs" by $39 billion. Wow, the republicans finally live up to what they used to be, they are going to try to get back to balanced budgets and all that right? Of please, of course not. Don't be naive. This is them just hating any program that doesn't help the rich. For that they have the next bill ready to go: a $60 billion dollar tax cut for the rich. All those cuts for them for the last 5 years, this bill would make em permanent. So while the US spends and spends and spends, the republicans feel steps must be taken to decrease amount of money taken in to pay for the spending. On top of that Bush is asking for additional $120 billion for his various wars.

So we have $39 billion cut over five years:
- Student loans with higher interest rates
- Medicare cuts that have higher premiums
- Medicaid cuts with reducing amount will pay for drugs, increasing premiums, and increasing co-payments
- Pension change, that is actually decent as it penalizes companies $3750 per employee fee for terminating plans, of course that is still cheaper then keeping the plan so don't expect to impact anything.
- Welfare reform that continues freeze on funding.

In return we get:
- $60 billion permanent tax cut for the rich
- $120 billion in spending for wars
- $18 billion for hurrican relief (most of which goes to Halliburton and other Bush related companies who contracted to do the work but instead get paid so much they contract out the work to another contractor who tends to get an additonal contractor who then might actually do the work...eventually)
- $2.3 billion for a mythic bird flu epidemic. Wish they put this much effort in cures such as cancer or AIDS. Drug companies will never come up with those cures, its simple not in their best interests to. More money is made by keeping people on their drugs for years then a one time fix that a cure or vaccine represents.

If followed the Republican example of monetary policy, i would quit my job and then go out and buy a new car and house.