Our President’s Puzzling Priorities

Bush acted on two spending bills today- signing a bill for the Pentagon and vetoing a bill for the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services.

Bush called the vetoed bill ?wasteful spending? saying it “spends too much”. The bill would have funded education, job training programs and health care- including cancer research and veterans health care.

At $150 billion, the spending bill certainly wasn’t cheap. But the Pentagon spending bill cost THREE TIMES AS MUCH – a whopping $459 billion.

Senator Kennedy, always an outspoken critic of Bush’s failed foreign AND domestic policies, was quick to respond:

Cancer research, investments in our schools, job training, protecting workers, and many other urgent priorities have all fallen victim to a president who squanders billions of dollars in Iraq but is unwilling to invest in America?s future

Dems in Congress’ Joint Economic Committee attacked the president’s failed policies in their own way, leaking a report that shows the cost of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars is about $US1.5 trillion -almost twice what the White House has actually requested ($804 billion).

The report estimates that the wars have cost the average american family more than $20,000.

Talk about ?wasteful spending?!