Frank Pallone: “when President Bush submitted his budget to Congress last week, he said it represented his values and his priorities. If…”

“when President Bush submitted his budget to Congress last week, he said it represented his values and his priorities. If that is indeed the case we really should question both. One really has to wonder if this budget document represents his priorities. You will remember 2 weeks ago during his State of the Union address, President Bush spent the majority of that speech talking about his Social Security privatization plan and the continued war in Iraq. Supposedly these were his priorities for the upcoming year. And yet the President did not include the additional $80 billion needed to fund the Iraq war or the trillions that will be needed over the next decade to fund his costly Social Security privatization proposal in his budget. Mr. Speaker, it is impossible for the President to reverse our Nation's fiscal collapse if he continues to send incomplete budgets to Capitol Hill. The President can say that he is going to cut the Federal deficit in half in several years; but the fact is, that cannot happen if the President does not send us an honest budget.”