Bush's unguarded remark about the third quarter of 2004 takes on added meaning when next year's fiscal plans are contrasted with the election-year budget. The 2005 budget provides increases in spending for popular programs such as education and nutrition. Next year, after the election, the White House will announce that they must be cut severely in the 2006 budget. This year, the administration increased spending on veterans by $519 million. In 2006, under the budget plan obtained by the Washington Post, it will cut that amount by $910 million -- clawing back the previous increase and almost $400 million more.

Substantial cuts are also contemplated for the National Institutes of Health, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Justice Department's police assistance and crime prevention programs, the Small Business Administration, the Social Security Administration and every other aspect of federal activity that comes under the wonkish rubric of "domestic discretionary spending."

In a modern society, such federal spending finances crucial functions of government. But the budget devised by the administration's conservative extremists expresses their reflexive disdain for the public sector. As sharp and damaging as the reductions contemplated for the 2006 budget may seem, however, they are merely a sample of what Republicans plan for the future if they maintain monopoly power in Washington. Remember when Newt Gingrich's "revolutionaries" shut down the federal government during a budget dispute with President Clinton? That remains the radical goal of the "compassionate conservatives" in the White House and EPI graphs.)

Counting all the hidden expenses -- such as inevitable changes in the alternative minimum tax -- the price of making Bush's cuts permanent will rise to a trillion dollars over the coming decade. Finding the money to fund Medicare and other entitlements under such enforced scarcity will present an enormous challenge. There will be little money left, if any, for such "frills" as scientific research, child care, libraries, the arts and the environment.

Many of us have always known that compassionate conservatism was a swindle. What we are learning now is how expensive, how destructive and how wildly unfair that swindle may prove to be.

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