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Budget baloney

President Bush has proposed a $3.1 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.

The Trib's take:

Congressional Democrats understandably gave the budget a cold reception, and Republicans weren't particularly warm, either.

The budget is heavily weighted toward defense, an 8 percent increase, and homeland security, an 11 percent increase, and offers a freeze or cut for just about everything else, including health and education.

The White House is fudging on the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And even with the freeze on nondefense spending, the Bush budget still calls for federal deficits of $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the second- and third-highest on record, the all-time record being $413 billion in 2004.

Red ink notwithstanding, Bush is still calling for a budget in surplus by 2012.

Bush knows that large parts of his budget are politically and economically unsustainable, but he also knows lawmakers will have to sweat to change them. He can view this with detachment, since four months into the budget year he'll be back in Crawford, Texas.

• • •

Recession

The Commerce Department says the U.S. economy grew only 0.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, meaning it was close to dead in the water and entering 2008 with no growth momentum. Consumer and business spending, as well as export sales, slowed dramatically.

The Trib's take:

The year-end economic figures are out, and they're not good. Indeed, they seem to say recession.

The standard definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters in which the economy shrinks, and that now seems likely.

The culprits are the credit crunch, the collapse of the housing market and high energy prices. The one figure, unfortunately, that was up in the fourth quarter was inflation.

The White House stoutly insists we're not in for a recession, only slow growth, and the antidote, it says, is to quickly pass the stimulus bill and the three pending trade treaties and to make the tax cuts permanent. But these are pretty puny weapons to affect the cycles of an economy that is more than $13 trillion.

• • •

Sky is falling

A 2 ton U.S. satellite the size of a small bus is out of control and headed for a collision with Earth later this month, federal officials say.

The Trib's take:

Because it's a spy satellite, the government won't say what kind of dangerous stuff might be aboard. As for the question on everybody's mind — "Where's it going to hit?" — officials don't know. As for the date of impact — late February or early March.

People worry this plummeting bus could come down where they're standing. The government worries it will come down where a rival power can get it.

Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for President Bush's National Security Council, probably thought he was being reassuring when he said, "Appropriate government agencies are monitoring the situation." Please tell us one of them isn't FEMA.