{"id":1087,"date":"2007-02-06T00:33:38","date_gmt":"2007-02-05T16:33:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1087"},"modified":"2009-10-01T11:28:45","modified_gmt":"2009-10-01T01:28:45","slug":"1083-of-passing-the-buck-too-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=1087","title":{"rendered":"[1083] Of passing the buck too quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier at BBC News, I read on how President Bush is planning to <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/business\/6329917.stm\" target=\"_blank\">reduce the US budget deficit<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>US President George W Bush has said his forthcoming budget plans will seek to curb domestic spending.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Cutting the deficit during a time of war requires us to restrain spending in other areas,&#8221; Mr Bush said in his weekly radio address.<\/p>\n<p>He said his plans for the next fiscal year would show that his aim of erasing the deficit by 2012 could be achieved without giving up tax cuts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I beginning to notice the in trend right now. Reduce fossil fuel consumption, reduce carbon emission, reduce budget deficit, etc, etc, <em>after <\/em>he steps down as the President.<\/p>\n<p>I realize that there are issues that demand attention that spans several generations. Nevertheless, I cannot help but wonder if that is the case or it is simply Bush passing the buck.<\/p>\n<p>Regardless, I think President Bush is trying to cut the wrong corners:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr Bush said the budget for the year starting in October 2007 would underline the need to tighten spending on domestic programmes &#8211; including on education, energy and health.<\/p>\n<p>The Washington Post newspaper said domestic spending would increase by 1% &#8211; less than inflation.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile military spending in Iraq and Afghanistan would increase.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Certain areas, especially education, are too critical to see spending tightening. At time when globalization is at nearly full steam, I do not think anybody could afford to cut spending on education. <a href=\"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/?p=937\">Not Malaysia<\/a>. Not Egypt. Not the Netherlands. Not the United States.<\/p>\n<p>If I were Bush, I would slow down on the military spending instead. The first step in reducing military spending is to avoid too many military conflicts.<\/p>\n<p>Some might call this a gun and butter model. Maybe it is, to some extent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Earlier at BBC News, I read on how President Bush is planning to reduce the US budget deficit: US President George W Bush has said his forthcoming budget plans will seek to curb domestic spending. &#8220;Cutting the deficit during a time of war requires us to restrain spending in other areas,&#8221; Mr Bush said in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,8],"tags":[137,179,973],"class_list":["post-1087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-politics-government","tag-climate-change","tag-fiscal-deficit","tag-george-w-bush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1087"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5355,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1087\/revisions\/5355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maddruid.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}