Priorities

The GOP has a clear set of them:

President Bush today proposed a $2.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2007 that would cut billions of dollars from domestic programs ranging from Medicare and food stamps to local law enforcement and disease control, while extending most of his tax cuts beyond their 2010 expiration date.

(snip)

To accommodate increased spending in the president's favored non-security programs such as diplomacy and foreign aid, veterans health care and energy, other programs would face significant cuts. Agriculture spending would fall 6.5 percent, education spending $3.8 percent. The Department of Transportation would lose 9.4 percent of its discretionary budget. The Army Corps of Engineers -- a congressional favorite that was highly criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- would be cut 11.2 percent.

But the biggest savings would come from entitlement programs, in which spending rises and falls according to complex formulas that Congress would have to change to meet Bush's demands. The president proposed cutting Medicare by $36 billion over five years, and $105 billion over a decade -- mainly by cutting payments to providers such as hospitals. Federal child support enforcement payments would fall slightly, while Medicaid and the State Children's Health Insurance Program would lose $5 billion over five years and $12 billion over 10 years.

I believe I've read somewhere that this new budget also fails to include the costs of Iraq and Afghanistan, so any projections about deficit cutting should be taken with a grain of salt. And the odds that, in a election year, those facing Democratic opposition are going to vote for this package of cuts are also pretty slim. Which adds to the argument that Democrats need to run for every seat.