Bait and Switch - Part 3,457

Actually I'm not sure exactly how many times this administration has used the old bait n' switch, but I do know that the press has touted the bait and buried the switch every single time.

This time it's funds for AIDS and poverty. While able to find over $100 billion (and counting) for his boondoggle in Iraq, aWol can't see his way to ask for the money to fully fund his widely touted "Millennium Challenge Account."

Here's what the Wall Street Journal had to say this morning:

With the federal budget stretched to pay for the war in Iraq, tax cuts and homeland security projects, the White House has warned cabinet departments that the president's fiscal 2005 budget proposal will include $2.5 billion in new money for his Millennium Challenge Account -- an initiative to reward well-run nations in Africa and elsewhere -- and $1.1 billion in increased spending for international AIDS projects, according to people familiar with the president's proposals.

Combined with appropriations still awaiting final congressional action for fiscal 2004, those amounts represent just 18% of the $30 billion in spending increases that the administration has promised would take place by 2008. Should Congress fund Mr. Bush's request, it would effectively put off the vast majority of the promised spending until after next year's presidential election.

Just like the federal deficit, BushCo is effectively putting off paying the bills until "later." Whenever later happens to be. Our grandchildren will get to pay off the huge debts racked up by tax cuts and spending increases on corporate interests. So to will our children and grandchildren be forced to finally - and realistically - deal with AIDS and poverty.

"Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many," Mr. Bush said in the State of the Union address.

Like other potentially historic opportunities presented to Bush, he has squandered this one.

"They aren't quite willing to put the money out there to match the rhetoric of the president's speech," said Steve Radelet, formerly the top Africa hand in both the Clinton and Bush Treasury departments.

Bait and switch has become the modus operandi of this administration. Trumpeting the first and burying the second has become the modus operandi of the press.