In his proposed budget of nearly $3 trillion for fiscal year 2008, President George W. Bush seeks to slow the rate of government spending on health care. Without a trace of irony, he calls this a move for fiscal responsibility. 

In this way, the nation will "begin to address our biggest fiscal challenge, the unsustainable growth in entitlement programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security," said Rob Portman, the president's budget director. 
 
The law mandates entitlement spending for Medicare, the federal health-care program for seniors and some disabled recipients of Social Security. Bush proposes to cut payments to doctors who treat the nation's 43 million Medicare patients. Millions of seniors born during or before the Second World War (perhaps your in-laws and/or parents) would suffer. 
 
Bush's proposed budget in fiscal year 2008 also cuts Medicaid, the mandated federal program of health insurance for poor kids, parents, seniors, and disabled people. "At least four-fifths of these Medicaid spending cuts would be achieved by shifting costs from the federal government to the states," writes Iris J. Lav of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As a result, states and local governments would have to increase taxes or cut services to maintain the current level of care for Medicaid beneficiaries. 
 
One health-care program slated for a cutoff of federal funding is the Preventive Care Block Grant.  The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oversees this grant that helps states to provide health care to low-income people. 
 
Meanwhile, the sky's the limit for Bush's proposed military spending to fight the global war on terror at home and abroad. There will be no trimming of spending here, as he seeks to increase the costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and increase outlays to Homeland Security. Presumably, the ongoing domestic and foreign wars to defeat terrorism by definition pose at worst a manageable threat to the federal budget, 
 
Has the nation been here before, fiscally speaking? You bet it has. Recall the deficit-creating military costs of the Reagan era to defend the U.S. from the evil tentacles of the former Soviet Union, which folded as the 1990s began.  As that famous philosopher and theologian once said, it's déjá vu all over again. 
 
According to Bush's proposed budget, entitlement spending on health care for the most vulnerable people in the U.S. is of the gravest consequence. This sounds like an idea straight from the minds of the geniuses at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Hey, those bright lights toil hard for their pay crafting policies aimed at worsening the living conditions of people who are just trying to survive to live another day. 
 
Such heroism. 
 
Seth Sandronsky is a member of Sacramento Area Peace Action and a co-editor of Because People Matter, Sacramento's progressive paper Because People Matter. He can be reached at: bpmnews@nicetechnology.com.