From The Are You Out Of Your Fucking Mind Department...

The record $3.1 trillion budget proposed by President Bush on Monday would produce eyepopping federal deficits, despite his attempts to impose politically wrenching curbs on Medicare and eliminate scores of popular domestic programs.

The Pentagon would receive a $36 billion, 8 percent boost for the 2009 budget year beginning Oct. 1, even as programs aimed at the poor would be cut back or eliminated. Half of domestic Cabinet departments would see their budgets cut outright.

Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.

But even those figures are optimistic since they depend on rosy economic forecasts and leave out the full costs of the war in Iraq. The White House predicts the economy will grow at a 2.7 percent clip this year, far higher than congressional and private economists expect, and the administration's $70 billion figure for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is simply a placeholder until the next president takes office.

Bush's lame-duck budget plan is likely to be ignored by Congress, which is controlled by Democrats and already looking ahead to November elections. His long-term projections are mostly academic since he's leaving office next January.

The president forecasts a $48 billion surplus by 2012, keeping a promise he made two years ago when strong revenue predictions made it look far easier. Now, he's relying on spending cuts -- for everything from transportation to Medicare and Medicaid to nonprofit groups that help the poor -- to do the job in order to keep his signature 2001 and 2003 tax cuts intact instead of expiring at the end of 2010.

"Our formula for achieving a balanced budget is simple: create the conditions for economic growth, keep taxes low and spend taxpayer dollars wisely or not at all," Bush said in his budget message.

Countdown And The Economy

On Tuesday’s Countdown, Keith looks at the market meltdown and how the failed policies of President Bush and the Republicans made it possible by deregulating the institutions that led us to where the economy is today, and by borrowing money from other countries to pay for massive tax cuts here at home.

Rachel Maddow joined Keith and talked about John Edwards, who was the first presidential candidate who talked about the impending crisis and suggested an economic stimulus package to head it off — and as long as the topic is the economy, he has the upper hand.

Not only was Edwards the first one talking about the stimulus package, as you mentioned, but he’s also been the populist guy on economics. He’s the guy whose been most willing from the very beginning to actually identify bad guys in the economy. To say, let’s be patriotic about something other than war, let’s be moralistic about something other than sex, let’s talk about corporate irresponsibility and corporations that don’t serve the people who work for them, or the consumers. Let’s actually identify un-American bad behavior in the economy and that kind of, I think, real forceful approach to the issue, is going to place him in good stead right now.