US President George W. Bush is proposing to slash medical care for the poor and elderly to meet the soaring cost of the Iraq war.
Bush's US$2.9 trillion budget, sent to Congress on Monday, includes US$100 billion extra for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for this year, on top of US$70 billion already allocated by Congress and US$141.7 billion next year. He is planning an 11.3 percent increase for the Pentagon. Spending on the Iraq war is destined to top the total cost of the 13-year war in Vietnam.
The rise in military spending will be paid for by a squeeze on domestic programs, including US$66 billion in cuts over five years to Medicare, the healthcare scheme for the elderly, and US$12 billion from the Medicaid healthcare scheme for the poor.
Bush said: "Today we submit a budget to the United States Congress that shows we can balance the budget in five years without raising taxes ... Our priority is to protect the American people. And our priority is to make sure our troops have what it takes to do their jobs."
Although Democrats control Congress and have promised careful scrutiny of the budget over the next few months, Bush has left them in a bind, unwilling to withhold funds for US troops on the frontline. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the days when Bush could expect a blank cheque for the wars were over, but she also insisted the Democrats would not deny troops the money they needed. Democrats could block Bush's proposed cuts to 141 domestic programs.
John Spratt, the Democratic chairman of the House Budget Committee, said: "I doubt that Democrats will support this budget and, frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either."
Kent Conrad, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said: "The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality, and continues to move America in the wrong direction. This administration has the worst fiscal record in history and this budget does nothing to change that."
The Vietnam war cost about US$614 billion at today's prices. According to the Congressional Research Service, the Iraq war has so far cost US$500 billion. About 90 percent of the spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars goes to Iraq. In addition to the spending on Iraq and Afghanistan this year and next, Bush is seeking US$50 billion for 2009.
Bush said the fact that there was no projected figure for 2010 did not mean he expected US troops to be out of Iraq by then. He said he did not want to set a timetable "because we don't want to send mixed signals to an enemy or to a struggling democracy or to our troops."
Included in the budget is US$5.6 billion for the extra 21,500 US troops that Bush ordered to Iraq last month. Some Democrats have threatened to withhold this part of the budget, but more than half of the troops are in place with the others on the way. A plan to build the Joint Strike Aircraft has been withheld. Its absence, at the request of the Pentagon, could have a knock-on effect for jobs in the UK.
In the run-up to the invasion in 2003, the Pentagon's projected estimate of the total cost of the war was US$50 billion. A White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was fired by Bush when he suggested that the total cost would be US$200 billion.
The New York Times noted that the cost of the war would have paid for universal healthcare in the US, nursery education for all three and four-year-olds in the country, immunization for children around the world against a host of diseases, and still leave about half of the money left over.
The Pentagon has long complained that it is overstretched. Bush wants to raise its budget from US$600.3 billion to US$624.6 billion for next year -- about 20 percent of the total budget.
US President Donald Trump yesterday announced sweeping "reciprocal tariffs" on US trading partners, including a 32 percent tax on goods from Taiwan that is set to take effect on Wednesday. At a Rose Garden event, Trump declared a 10 percent baseline tax on imports from all countries, with the White House saying it would take effect on Saturday. Countries with larger trade surpluses with the US would face higher duties beginning on Wednesday, including Taiwan (32 percent), China (34 percent), Japan (24 percent), South Korea (25 percent), Vietnam (46 percent) and Thailand (36 percent). Canada and Mexico, the two largest US trading
AIR SUPPORT: The Ministry of National Defense thanked the US for the delivery, adding that it was an indicator of the White House’s commitment to the Taiwan Relations Act Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) and Representative to the US Alexander Yui on Friday attended a delivery ceremony for the first of Taiwan’s long-awaited 66 F-16C/D Block 70 jets at a Lockheed Martin Corp factory in Greenville, South Carolina. “We are so proud to be the global home of the F-16 and to support Taiwan’s air defense capabilities,” US Representative William Timmons wrote on X, alongside a photograph of Taiwanese and US officials at the event. The F-16C/D Block 70 jets Taiwan ordered have the same capabilities as aircraft that had been upgraded to F-16Vs. The batch of Lockheed Martin
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
China's military today said it began joint army, navy and rocket force exercises around Taiwan to "serve as a stern warning and powerful deterrent against Taiwanese independence," calling President William Lai (賴清德) a "parasite." The exercises come after Lai called Beijing a "foreign hostile force" last month. More than 10 Chinese military ships approached close to Taiwan's 24 nautical mile (44.4km) contiguous zone this morning and Taiwan sent its own warships to respond, two senior Taiwanese officials said. Taiwan has not yet detected any live fire by the Chinese military so far, one of the officials said. The drills took place after US Secretary