06 February 2006

Support, my ass.

The White House has released the President's 2007 budget request, and there's not a lot of surprises there. Lots of projects are on the chopping block, defense and homeland security spending are up, the deficit is huge, the moron still wants to make his tax cuts permanent, and he wants the bill for that to mostly come out of programs that benefit the poor. Shocker, huh.

I'll probably blog some more on some of the science-related areas of the budget later on. Right now, there's one area that I want to look at first: the military pay raise. I know, it's not the most obvious place to start off, but that's where the vast bulk of our family income comes from these days, and it's always nice to see how the next year is looking. I also like to take a look and see if Bush is putting the government's wallet where his "support the troops" rhetoric comes from.

It will probably come as a shock to most of you (yes, that is sarcasm) to find that Bush talks a real good game, but when it comes time to go and actually do something, he's nowhere to be found. The proposed annual pay raise for the military next year is 2.2 percent. The economic assumptions that the budget is based on predict an inflation rate of 2.4 percent.

That's right. The same White House that tries to brand anyone who disagrees with their war as "unsupportive" of the troops has decided to show their support by suggesting a military pay raise that doesn't even match their own inflation prediction.

For some reason, that's not a level of support that impresses me.

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