The Bush budget

The president sent his budget to Capitol Hill on Monday, and it landed with a predictable thud.

Congressional Democrats aren't happy with the fact that the Bush plan actually exercises a modicum of fiscal restraint.

"It's dead on arrival," said Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.

That's precisely what Democrats said during the 1980s when Ronald Reagan attempted to trim the size of the federal government. Then, after they spent like drunken sailors, Democrats had the gall to blame Mr. Reagan for the budget deficits that ensued despite record revenue streams.

At any rate, Sen. Baucus has a point. The president will be out of office by January, so a Democratic Congress has little incentive to cater to Mr. Bush's priorities.

"He doesn't have us over a barrel this year, because either a President Clinton or a President Obama will have to deal with us next year," Majority Leader Harry Reid said this week.

Then again, Sen. Reid, what if it's President Romney or President McCain? Perish the thought!

Despite the political reality, the bottom line remains that congressional Democrats -- and some Republicans -- won't tolerate a budget that doesn't further pad the ample backside of the federal behemoth.

Consider that the president calls for spending $3.1 trillion in fiscal 2009. That means federal spending will have jumped more than 50 percent from the $2 trillion Washington blew through just seven years earlier. But that's apparently not enough for many members of Congress, who are upset that Mr. Bush seeks to reduce the growth of Medicaid and Medicare while freezing budgets for many domestic agencies and programs.

In the meantime, entitlement spending will continue to soar as Congress refuses to consider any structural reforms for these looming budget busters.

The president deserves his share of criticism for using budget gimmickry to deflect the likely costs of our military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. And his assumption that the alternative minimum tax will be imposed on millions of new taxpayers is pure folly.

But Mr. Bush deserves credit for presenting a budget that eliminates 151 programs at a savings of $18 billion and attempts to finally get a handle on discretionary domestic spending.

Which is why the party of Big Government has deemed the plan "dead on arrival."