How the Bush budget disaster affects New York ....

Ordinary Americans are facing severe cuts if George Bush's new budget When it becomes law. Bush plans devastating cuts to America's top priorities, from homeland security to health care to education to benefits for veterans and much more. Despite these cuts, this budget is a fiscal disaster, with Bush's trademark irresponsibility pushing America deeper into the red with another record deficit.

Homeland Security

The Bush 2006 budget cuts $420 million to state and local funding for homeland security, including a $49.4 million cut for New York. These cuts will take police and firefighters off your streets.

The Bush budget cuts the COPS program, which has put 11,927 officers on New York streets, by 96 percent.

Health Care

The Bush budget cuts $45 billion from Medicaid, enough to provide health care to 1.8 million children. New York's share of these cuts is $6.1 billion.

Bush's budget cuts the very same community and rural health care programs he touted during the campaign.

Education

Bush underfunds his own No Child Left Behind Act by $13.1 billion in his budget. In New York, that means a shortfall of $1 billion, leaving behind 296,648 New York children.

Bush promised to fund Pell Grants in his State of the Union address, but his budget is $6.6 billion short. That's $508.8 million less than what's needed in New York, a real burden for the 358,375 students in New York who receive the grants.

Other Priorities

Bush cuts $9.3 million from New York job training programs in his 2006 budget.

The Bush budget would require many veterans to pay a new $250 annual "user fee" to use the Veterans Administration health care system, and would double the prescription drug co-payment for the 1,361,164 New York veterans.

Bush cuts New York clean water programs by $42.7 million.

Bush's 2006 budget also cuts the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program -- which helps low-income families afford heating fuel in the winter -- by $234.4 million, including $29.3 million cut for New York residents.

And Bush's irresponsible budget is a record $427 billion in the red, increasing each New York family's share of the federal debt by $37,870.

the vindictive, spoiled little brat is going to show US who's boss. Seriously, his budget isn't going to resemble the budget that is ultimately passed. Even his fellow Slugs aren't going to support it, it's a complete sham. He just wants to be able to blame Congress for HIS fuck-ups since his give away to the rich tax cuts have driven the deficit to record numbers.

Ohhhhhhhhh............four more years of this asshole. I don't know if I can take it, I really don't.

Joe Giambra never saw a tax he did not want to cut attempted to raise Erie County sales tax. The citizens shouted that down, Hundreds of county employees are to be laid off. County Parks closed. Libraries not funded. Pataki ambivalent seems like.

All things that make communities great are going going gone. It has always been thus with borrow and spend Republicans. They have broke the bank.

The big bugaboo is Medicaid. National health insurance might go a long way toward healing some of these problems. We are going to pay one way or the other.

180

even those in red states, who depend generally MORE on federal tax dollars than we in the blue states do; even those who voted for him, because they thought that the war in Iraq made us all much safer and his tough rhetoric is totally cool, dude! ; even those in his white evangelical base, who thought that gay people getting married is a worse problem than anything else in the whole world; even the theocrats, whose hatred for non-Christians trumps everything else, even their own economic self-interests; EVERYONE!