It's the money, stupid.

OK, so now it’s become imminently clear to me what’s going on in Washington. Sure we know that this administration somehow can’t tell the truth. Honestly, at first I thought Dubya was just a complete moron. But now I see that he embodies the evil that he projects onto the leaders of countries like Iran and North Korea. These lies that he and his administration are on a tear to dismantle this country and put it in the hands of the corporations.

We all know by now that the administration lied about the WMDs. But what irks the hell out of me now, after hearing about the budget they just submitted, has to do with the lies they tell about the costs of their programs. First, they told us that the Iraq war was only going to cost US taxpayers a couple billion dollars, and that oil revenues would pay for the rest. Well, we’re now talking in the hundreds of billions of dollars. Whoops, small rounding error. It’s interesting to note that the administration plans to submit a request for another $80 billion for the war, yet that amount is surprisingly absent from the budget.

Next was Medicare reform – adding the prescription drug benefit. First it was going to cost $400 billion. I seem to recall that someone in the administration informed them that it would cost a lot more, and that person was fired. No undying loyalty to Dubya, no job. Surprise, surprise, the administration letter fessed up that the plan would cost $534 billion. And now, today, they tell us it will cost more like $724 billion. Another rounding error. And now Bush says we’ll need to address this problem. Or is it a “crisis”?

If you add to this the fact that the administration was told that we would need a lot more troops in Iraq than they actually sent in and you can see that they’ve got a problem grasping the truth when it doesn’t fit in with their plans.

Now they want to reform Social Security. Private accounts, they say, are the answer, yet they won’t explain how much it will cost. And if they did come up with a number, they’ve got no credibility, so how can we believe them.

Here’s what I have come to realize. There is a method to the madness here. The idea here is simple. Right wing Republicans have always wanted to shrink the size of government. OK, so I don’t have a problem there if there’s a good reason to do it and it actually makes sense. But not when it’s simply based on a belief that our way is the way things should be and that's that. First they increase the size of government by adding tremendous costs to Medicare. Then there’s the cost of the war. And don’t forget the tax cuts, which drove up the deficit to record numbers. If you consider the tremendous cost of their Social Security plan, all of a sudden there's too much money going out and not enough coming in. We’ve got ourselves a financial “crisis” that needs some tough actin’ cowboy to fix it. Voila, now Dubya’s got the justification he needs to cut government programs. Pretty ingenious. Run up huge debts and then claim there's a fiscal crisis.

Honestly, if he had his way, he would get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and every other program that seeks to protect those in need from succumbing to lives in poverty. Everyone should be able to take care of him or herself without government sticking their noses in. That’s what Dubya would say. Too bad that he never really had to fend for himself in all of those failed business that he got bailed out of. Oh and I’m sure he got his Yale degree and MBA because he was gifted student.

Don’t let these guys fool you into believing there are crisis-like problems with government programs. They actually run pretty efficiently, from a cost perspective. Let’s not forget that the Medicare reform that was passed prohibited the government from negotiating the prices of prescription drugs. Where’s the benefit to Medicare recipients there? And the answer to the Social Security problem is to give that money to private investment firms. Weakening environmental regulations because they cost companies too much. Isn’t government supposed to protect its citizens? It’s not supposed to be all about putting money into the hands of big business. I’m pissed, can you tell?