Like a bad sit-com, the President's recently released 2007 budget feeds the public little more than worn-out storylines dressed up with a few new gimmicks and gags, most of them predictable and bad.  The White House script writers may proclaim austerity and accountability, but the end result fails to deliver on what should be the simplest of exercises.  After all, nothing is easier than identifying wasteful government programs ripe for the axe.

Even some of the budget's good ideas are merely reruns of previous proposals the administration never pushed to fruition.  We have been wooed into believing that, just like the great Rachel and Ross love affair, administration cuts to farm commodity programs or oil and gas research and development subsidies will finally happen.  But there is not likely to be a happy ending this time, with congressional opposition and administration inaction bound to kill the cuts.  

A quick survey provides a few very predictable examples: 

Agriculture Subsidies.  Just like last year, the President's budget includes a slate of minor reforms to the Agriculture Department's seventy-year-old commodity payment programs.  One of the oldest boondoggles on the books, these programs funnel billions of dollars in subsidies to a handful of rich agribusiness companies, distort domestic and international trade, and encourage the degradation of vital wetlands and sensitive ecosystems.   If enacted, the President's proposals would save an estimated $7 billion dollars over ten years and signal a start to reducing annual farm payments that have skyrocketed past the $20 billion mark.  But let's rewind and see how these changes fared last year:  pressured by deep-pocketed farm lobbies and polarized politics, Congress overruled the President's budget and kept the subsidies flowing.       

Oil and Gas Subsidies.  A first step to curbing the nation's oil addiction might be to stop forcing taxpayers to underwrite the oil and gas industry's research and development costs.  For the second year in a row, the administration has proposed just that.  The President's budget once again zeros out a $60 million program that helps the highly profitable oil and gas companies make even more money by subsidizing its research efforts.  Sounds like a good idea.  The proof, however, is in the pudding.  Last year the identical reduction was restored after lawmakers, most notably Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) decried the cuts and worked to successfully fund the program once again.  When the same cuts were proposed again, Sen. Bingaman predictably released another statement calling the cuts a "wrong-headed decision" that he will work to reverse again this year.  Without a veto threat from the President-who has yet to cancel a single spending bill-it is hard to believe the public will see anything but a repeat of this special interest give-away. 

Nuclear Power Research and Development.  Over the past fifty years, nuclear power has received more than its fair share of handouts and still hasn't been able to get off the government dole. Yet true to form, President Bush proposes to solve our energy crisis by turning the clock back to the 1950's and sinking even more money into the nuclear power industry.  The budget provides a 55 percent increase for nuclear power research and development, continuing the administration's reliance on old proposals that have already proven economically and environmentally unsustainable.  It is long past time to set nuclear power free and let market competition drive investment decisions.          

Nuclear Reprocessing.  Research and Development subsidies aren't the only gifts the administration wants to heap on the nuclear industry.  The President's budget contains $250 million for something called the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, which is being billed as a brand new initiative to recycle nuclear waste. Unfortunately, simply slapping a new label on an old concept doesn't convert it into a best-selling idea. Nuclear reprocessing was experimented with as far back as 1940, and quickly put out of its misery as both enormously expensive, dangerous, and ultimately ineffective.    Revived again in the 70s, reprocessing got such bad reviews that both Presidents Ford and Carter banned reprocessing because of serious concerns over the proliferation of nuclear weapons. As for reducing the amount of waste from nuclear power, Felix Killar of the Nuclear Energy Institute stated, "From the perspective of waste reduction, it doesn't really give us any benefit."  But that isn't what the administration and Congress want to hear, so they're going to keep their heads in the sand and try to resuscitate this long-dead project yet again.        

Timber Roads.  Built with public dollars to support logging by private companies, over 400,000 miles of roads already snake through our national forests, representing a huge history of subsidies to the timber industry. Of course, once done hauling away billions of dollars worth of trees at bargain basement prices, the timber industry and the Forest Service leave the roads untended.  The result?  A $10 billion maintenance backlog that grows larger every year.  In a classic inversion of sound fiscal management, the President's budget addresses this giant taxpayer burden by further cutting the Forest Service's already paltry maintenance budget by another $65 million while continuing to fund new roads.  This means the backlog will continue to grow and even more public money will be spent adding to the problem.

Conclusion
As the above examples illustrate, flipping through the President's budget is like channel surfing during the summer--57 channels and nothing on. By the end of the budget cycle, all the public is left with is a shell-game spending plan that drives the federal deficit deeper into the hole at the expense of taxpayer pockets and environmental health.  It's time for the administration and Congress to stop recycling old proposals and start delivering new ideas that will truly set America on the path to fiscal and environmental responsibility.