July 11,2006

Baucus Comments on Mid-Session Budget Review

Despite administration boasts, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security still threatened

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, commented today on the Mid-Session Budget Review released by the White House Office of Management and Budget. Despite claims from the Bush administration that the budget numbers show strong improvement, the deficit for Fiscal Year 2007 actually exceeds all deficits in all years before President George W. Bush took office. Meanwhile, wages are down and household incomes have fallen.

“The administration can say what it wants about the economic numbers, but people in this economy are still struggling. Employment’s down and poverty is up. Baby boomers will start retiring in 2008, putting huge pressures on the Federal budget through increases in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. We need to be running surpluses now, but this administration is still in the red,” said Baucus. “The bottom line is, they are crowing over a deficit figure that is still the fourth worst in American history. They are painting a rosier picture of the budget than they have a right to do.”

The 2006 revenues reflected in today’s mid-session budget review are substantially less than the Bush administration projected back in 2001. Projections of deficits during the next five years still do not include all costs of the Iraq war, which have never been included in the President’s budget proposals, or the costs of much-needed relief from the alternative minimum tax.

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