PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS: I will veto any bill that does not cut the number of earmarks in half and will order federal agencies to veto any earmark Congress doesn’t vote on.

“The people’s trust in their government is undermined by Congressional earmarks - special interest projects that are often snuck in at the last minute, without discussion or debate.”

DMI SAYS: “Earmarks only make up a very small part of the overall budget. While reining them in is a worthwhile goal, especially if budget transparency is increased in the process, the President’s proposed earmark reforms will do little to balance the budget or impact the average middle-class American. And since the President’s promise to veto bills with excessive earmarks only applies to 2009 spending, it is unlikely that many of these bills will cross his desk before he leaves office.”

?    Earmarks for 2008 are projected to be just one half of one percent of the budget – hardly a significant item overall. However, the President is right that much more transparency is needed in a budget process that currently allows for billions of dollars – often targeted at special interests and projects without a public purpose – to go undisclosed every year.

?    Earmarking, which is different than the normal budgetary process in which funds are pooled for general expenses, designates certain funds for a specific institution, project or business. The problem is that there has been very little oversight in the process, allowing anonymous Congressional sponsors to back earmarks whose structure and purpose are not fully disclosed. This had led to a corrupt budgetary process wherein Congressmembers can earmark funds for special interests, pet projects, and projects that serve little purpose.

?    A 2006 USA Today poll found that a large number of special interest projects received earmarks after they hired lobbyists with close personal ties to lawmakers or staffers working with the House and Senate appropriations committees. The President's call to print the substance of earmarks in the actual text of bills, not in the undisclosed reports that accompany them, will be an important tool in tracking and cracking down on these sorts of kickbacks.

?    Cutting earmark funding in half by the end of this session is a laudable goal, but it is also important that earmarks remain part of the budgetary process because they allow Congress to direct some of the White House's fiscal priorities. While spending on earmarks has reached enormous heights over the last decade, it's important that earmark reform not only scale back the portion of the budget spent on earmarks, but also include measures to guarantee as much transparency as possible.

?    What would complete the President's plan is a measure to require that the sponsors of every earmark also be disclosed, thus allowing both those within and those outside of the government to keep tabs on tax dollars, and discourage Congressmembers from granting kickbacks to special interests.

Relevant Statistics:

?    Total number of earmarks in 2008 spending bills, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense: 11,145 .

?    Dollar value of these earmarks according to TCS: $15.3 billion.

?    Approximate total federal spending for 2008: $2,901 billion ($2.9 trillion).

?    Amount that Senator Mitch McConnell earmarked in 2008 for the McConnell Technology Training Center to be built in his state: $3.2 million.

?    Minimum number of buildings, bridges and roads in West Virginia that are named for Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Robert Byrd: 8.

PRESIDENT BUSH SAYS: We must make Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid fiscally sound.

“Every Member in this chamber knows that spending on entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is growing faster than we can afford… I have laid out proposals to reform these programs.”

DMI SAYS: “Unfortunately, when President Bush proposes reforming something, it usually means weakening it.”

?    In his 2008 budget, the President proposed cuts in Medicaid that would shift costs to the states, driving them to restrict eligibility or diminish benefits. Similarly, the President’s ill-fated 2005 Social Security privatization plan included steep cuts in the benefits guaranteed to retirees, survivors, and the disabled. While putting these vital components of our nation’s social safety net on sound fiscal ground is imperative, we must not undermine needed health care or retirement income for the elderly, sick, and poor to do so.

?    Cutting Social Security benefits is not necessary to ensure the program’s solvency. Social Security will have enough money to pay all benefits through 2046, with no changes to the system at all.

?    Modest reforms, including raising the cap on income subject to Social Security taxes so that high earners, along with low- and middle-income Americans, pay the tax on all of their earned income, would go a long way towards ensuring solvency.

?    Workers who have paid into the Social Security system have a right to full benefits. For the government to deny full benefits would, in effect, mean that the United States has defaulted on its government bonds.

?    The erosion of traditional pensions means that Social Security is even more essential to the retirement security of middle-class and aspiring middle-class Americans than ever before.

?    Medicare and Medicaid costs are growing because overall health care costs are increasing, not because these programs are administered inefficiently or because benefits are too generous. While “reforms” could push more of the costs onto the states or onto poor families and the elderly, lower federal costs would be achieved at the expense of needed medical care. 

?    The President’s interest in securing these programs for the benefit of America’s middle class will be illustrated by the substance of the proposals he offers, and his willingness to suspend “market” ideology and preserve the intention that drove the founding of these programs in the first place. Social Security remains an insurance program, not an investment opportunity.

Relevant Statistics:

?    Percentage of the typical retiree's income provided by Social Security: 75.

?    Number of senior citizens lifted above the poverty line by their Social Security benefits: 13 million.

?    Approximate percentage of the Social Security shortfall over 75 years that could be erased by repealing the President’s tax cuts on the top one percent of Americans: 100.

?    Number of Americans who rely on Medicaid: 55 million.

?    Proportion of children who get their health care through Medicaid: More than 1 in 4.

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DMI on the 2008 State of the Union