Boy Whores, Crank, And The Budget

originally published February 14, 2007

The president’s proposed $2.9 trillion budget is his first step toward eliminating the federal deficit by the year 2012: four years after he leaves office. He announced this goal in his State of the Union address, and it went over well… if only as a combination of platitude and whistling past the mass grave.

“First,” he said, “we must balance the federal budget. We can do so without raising taxes.” Certainly, that’s a jaw dropper, especially considering that the president has had six years with a Republican Congress and has yet to submit a balanced budget. That reality aside, he continued: “What we need is spending discipline in Washington, DC. We set a goal of cutting the deficit in half by 2009 - and met that goal three years ahead of schedule. Now let us take the next step. In the coming weeks, I will submit a budget that eliminates the federal deficit within the next five years. I ask you to make the same commitment. Together, we can restrain the spending appetite of the federal government, and we can balance the federal budget.”

FactCheck.org, part of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, assessed the president’s new-found commitment to fiscal responsibility: “Actually, Bush inherited a budget with a comfortable surplus, and then ran up enormous deficits that continue to the present. Under Bush, the national debt (debt held by the public) has increased by more than $1.5 trillion. The annual deficits [sic] peaked at $413 billion in fiscal year 2004, and has declined since then. But in fiscal year 2006 (which ended last Oct. 31) the deficit was still $248 billion. The latest estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office project a further reduction in the current fiscal year, to $172 billion. That would indeed be less than half the worst of Bush’s deficits, but it would be only two years prior to fiscal 2009, not three.

“As for spending restraint, Bush has shown little if any to date. He allowed spending to soar 42 percent during his presidency, and didn’t veto a single spending bill. (His only veto was of a bill to loosen restrictions on federally funded stem-cell research.) He did sign massive tax cuts, and revenues increased only 21 percent during the same period.”

Fiscal Discipline?

From the outset of our collective, brutish slogging toward the president’s 2012 goal, then, we’re hobbled by an incredulity that fiscal discipline can have anything to do with any goal this president sets. Bush’s record as a steward of the people’s money is the inverse of exemplary. The war in Iraq alone, according to a Jan. 19 article in the Wall Street Journal, will cost an estimated $8.4 billion a month in 2007. That money will be borrowed, of course, and it’s probably fair to say that the Pentagon low-balled the figure. A more recent analysis by David S. Cloud in the Feb. 3 edition of the New York Times updates the president’s plans for funding the war: “The Bush administration is seeking a record military budget of $622 billion for the 2008 fiscal year, Pentagon officials have said. The sum includes more than $140 billion for war-related costs.

“The administration is also seeking $93 billion in the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, to pay for military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, the officials said.”

That sounds grim - in terms of both blood and treasure - but the costs of the war in Iraq merely underscore the president’s fiscal ineptitude. In a June 4, 2006, discussion of the president’s economic policies, Tim Russert, host of "Meet the Press," observed that Bush’s record of fiscal stewardship gives little hope that any of his comments on fiscal discipline can be considered as any kind of predictor of his behaviors or policies.

Russert said, “I went back and looked at federal spending on a variety of categories from 2001 when the president became president, Republicans controlled the House and the Senate and the White House. And look at this. The budget went from a $281 billion surplus to a $336 billion deficit. A swing of $617 billion. Federal spending went up 37 percent. The debt went up 46 percent.”

This is not the record of someone who stubbornly claims to be a fiscal conservative, yet in his stumping to support his budget proposals, Bush speaks as though the past were absolutely irrelevant to his current propositions. In a Nov. 7, 2006, White House press release, the president returned to using the language he employed when he first ran for president. He isn’t the problem. Government is the problem.

Here’s what he said: “… And my fundamental question to the American people is, who do you want making the decisions with your money? Do you want to make it yourself, or do you want the government making those decisions? The budget I’ve submitted says we can meet our priorities and let you make the decisions… with the money you’ve earned through your hard work.”

The interesting corollary to this is the implication that he isn’t the government. This, in spite of occupying the White House for six years and having a Republican Congress for most of that time. The spending has nothing to do with him. It’s all those bad guys that we elected.

Enter Pastor Ted

So it’s our fault, not his. Try as I might, I can’t decide whether he makes comments like this because he’s absolutely ingenuous or knuckle-dragging stupid.

However, I found a possible answer in the weird case of Reverend Ted Haggard, former president of the National Association of Evangelicals, a group representing more than 45,000 churches with 30 million members. Haggard was ratted out by a male prostitute he hired off and on more than a three-year period. This same male prostitute, Mike Jones, was responsible for procuring methamphetamine for Rev. Haggard. As a result of the ensuing scandal, Haggard lost his position as pastor of the 14,000-member New Life Church, which he founded 20 years ago in his basement.

But that’s all in the past. According to a Nov. 7 article in the New York Times by Neela Banerjee, Haggard is now “cured.” After undergoing an intensive three-week regimen of counseling, Haggard has announced in an email to his former parishioners that “Jesus is starting to put me back together.”

Three weeks' worth of Jesus trumps three years' worth of boy whores and crack. Okay… good to know. Haggard himself was not available for comment, but his spokesperson, Rev. Tim Ralph, told the Denver Post that Haggard was “completely heterosexual” - does anyone have any clues what this means? - and that his homosexuality was not a “constant thing.” As for the drugs, Haggard has dismissed his possession by claiming that he just bought them; he didn’t use them. As for the future, Haggard and his wife will seek online master’s degrees in psychology. The oversight board of New Life Church has recommended that Haggard look at a secular career.

Okay, what does a boy-whore-diddling, crank-fondling (Ha! A two-fer!), ex-evangelical slick have in common with the most powerful man in the world? Well… first, I’d point out that I’m less concerned with the answer than the fact that the question itself just tickles the hell out of me. But apart from that, I’d suggest that however much they want it, both Bush and Haggard are mired in their own tendencies. And however much they claim otherwise, no one should expect anything different from them than their past behaviors would lead us to anticipate. They are who they are; “who they are” is pretty definite, so based on accumulated evidence, we ought to know what to expect from them.

If we’re surprised, it’s our own damned fault.

Sam Prestridge