I admire the continued smoke and mirrors the Bush government uses on a daily basis. The new “budget” is designed to balance our national budget by 2012. Lots of tax “adjustments”, that’s increases to slups like me. Instead of pulling the huge tax cuts that Bush gave his “base”…those that make over 250K a year, he proposes to re-classify retiree’s and how much they should pay for their Medicare premium. Bush is going to lower the bar, putting more seniors in the “you got to pay more” for Medicare with an indexing slight of hand. When it comes to Medicare premiums, Bush just threw Grandma and Grandpa under the bus for the likes of the Paris Hilton’s.

Backdoor Increase

Throughout his six-plus years in office, President Bush has carefully polished his image as a tax cutter. Even today, with the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continuing to escalate, he continues to press Congress to make his 10-year, $ 1. 7 trillion tax-cut package permanent — a policy he maintains is essential to stimulating the economy. But now comes his latest budget, at $ 2. 8 trillion, and what can only be described as a backdoor tax increase. Not something one would expect from a tax cutter.

According to a New York Times article Mr. Bush will ask Congress to cease indexing the thresholds that determine who will pay higher premiums for Medicare. Without indexing for inflation, more and more middle-class families would suddenly be deemed as upper-income, and subject to the higher premiums.

The $ 10 billion that the White House expects to generate by ending indexing is seen as a way of meeting Mr. Bush’s goal of balancing the budget by 2012. But if fiscal prudence is the goal — and it should be — then there are other, more equitable ways to raise revenue.

— Times Union, Albany, N. Y.