Mike Pence, please step up your efforts to persuade Republicans to rediscover their philosophical center:
Government spending hit an all-time high for a single month in March, pushing the budget deficit up significantly from the red-ink level of a year ago.
In its monthly accounting of the government's books, the Treasury Department reported Wednesday that federal spending totaled $250 billion last month, up 13.7 percent from March 2005.
Government receipts also were up, rising 10.6 percent from a year ago, to $164.6 billion. That left a deficit for the month of $85.5 billion, a record imbalance for March.
In a related story: "President Bush said Friday he would use his power to veto spending bills if Congress does not cut the federal budget as he has asked." Ha, ha, ha.
Comments
The President and the veto? In the same sentence? Remarkable!
It would have been nice if he had used it even once in 2000, 2001, 2002....
I have been saying now for three primarys that budget deficits are bad and getting worse. I reported earlier this year that our representatives spent $553 billion more in terms of a unified budget then they collected. However, this included dedicated social security and Medicare revenues. The actual general budget deficit was $726 Billion! With the new Rx drug program and Katrina damage, we are looking at a huge increase.
March 2006 shows an annualized rate of $1.04 Trillion!
It is immoral and un-American to continue to borrow money to pay for programs we want and have our children pay the bill. If we want government programs such as Social Security, Medicare and disaster aid, we need to have the guts to pay the required taxes now.
Can you Just Say No to Two More Years?