SHRUB DRUBBING:

Bush got nearly everything he wanted with 2004 budget (ALAN FRAM, January 29, 2004, Chicago Sun-Times)

President Bush is ready to roll out his 2005 budget just days after Congress finished this year's and demonstrated anew that the adage ''dead on arrival'' did not apply to most of his fiscal plans.

In what analysts and lawmakers agree was an impressive string of successes, Bush won most of the broad priorities he proposed in his $2.2 trillion budget for 2004.

He scored a major tax cut, new Medicare prescription drug benefits and money for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the president held the spending that Congress controls to 3 percent growth. [...]

Lawmakers have not been rubber stamps for the current president, trimming his defense request while spending more than he asked for highways, public works and veterans. They ignored Bush's plan to make tax cuts permanent, scaled back his proposal to stop taxing corporate dividends, blocked his energy bill and pockmarked spending measures with thousands of home-district projects.

Even so, aided by a friendly Republican-run Congress and a political climate that has diverted attention from record federal deficits, the budget that Bush proposed last February fared as well on Capitol Hill as any president's in recent memory, said legislators and other observers.

Imagine what he'd accomplish if he weren't a moron?

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 30, 2004 8:21 PM