Responding to the President's Budget

2006-02-02T09:30:00-07:00

“Good intentions and good beginnings are not the measure of success. What matters in the end is completion: performance and results. Not just making promises, but making good on promises.”

— President Bush’s 2003 Budget

Next week, the President submits his fiscal 2007 budget to Congress. Like his State of the Union Address, the budget will include a long litany of promises—mostly old, some new, almost all of them already broken. By Bush’s own standard—“performance and results”—his administration and his friends in Congress would get a failing grade.

Bush’s sorry record of keeping his own promises presents progressives with a rich opportunity to treat the President’s budget as an issue of character: have Bush and his conservative allies actually delivered on the promises made to the American people in past budgets? Can they be trusted to keep their word and provide the American people with honest leadership? To both questions, the answer is a resounding no.

Traditionally, progressives have responded to the President’s budget in kind, with a full set of competing priorities and a side dish of complaints about spending cuts and “tax cuts for the wealthy.” In addition to being unpersuasive, this approach has reinforced perceptions that progressives want more spending and bigger government. A debate on conservative sincerity—rather than the substance of the budget—is an effective alternative tactic for progressives. And there is plenty of ammunition.

For more on responding to President Bush’s budget, please read our recent message memo Too Many Broken Promises For Too Long: How To Play Offense on the President’s Budget Message.

Third Way Dispatch: Responding to the President's Budget

Responding to the President's Budget