Federal Dithering Budget

With the Liberals sitting in a minority gov't situation, they had to play tip toe around ideologies of all the opposition parties, so they can get the budget passed in the House and not be defeated, which no one really wants right now anyway.

Federal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale released the 2005 budget today. With most budgets of late, they always announce what they're going to do not just for ONE year, but for the next FOUR or FIVE, so it may seem like a lot of money, but when you divide by the number of years, it amounts to JACK SHIT! And sometimes they reannounce money they're going to spend. Keep in mind the gov't takes in about $191 billion a year and is sitting on at least a $12 billion surplus. Over the next few years the surplus will total $40 billion. There's only 33 million people in Canada. You figure it out. Here are my likes and dislikes.

Likes:

Military spending. Let's face it, our soldiers are some of the best in the world and our pilots are rated number one. But the equipment they use is old and unmaintainable. It's crap really. It has killed our servicemen. It's embarrassing. But what may seem like a $12 billion infusion in one year is really spread out over five years, so more like $2.4 billion a year. Woopdie fucking doo. We'll now have 60,000 in our armed forces - a 5,000 person increase. Yay.

Tax Relief. Any tax cuts of any form are always good. They're not cutting personal income tax rates, just corporate rates from 21 to 19%. They're only raising the personal exemption, which they do anyway to meet inflation increases. So what are you gonna save each year for the next four years? About a whopping $450. But after their usual inflation increases, it's really only about $250. I think I'll buy me a bottle of scotch with that. Woopdie fucking do. Think about how much the gov't wasted in Adscam, in the HRDC boondoogle, the useless gun registry and coming soon to an environment near you...

Dislikes:

KYOTO. What a fucking pile of shit treaty we signed. Does anyone realize that our gov't just handed over $5 billion dollars because we needed credits to pollute? But does the gov't have a plan in place to actually combat smog (which the Kyoto protocol does NOT address)? Nope. Jeez, that $5 billion could have been used to pay some debt down or tax relief for working families couldn't it? COULDN'T IT. Instead, it disappears to some international socialist treaty. So I'd like to formally welcome all Canadians to the first stage of a world socialist gov't. And you can thank Paul Martin's buddy, Maurice Strong, who got him the job at Canada Steamship Lines for putting Kyoto together. Oh did I mention that Strong is U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan's top advisor?

Child Care. Former hockey star Ken Dryden is in charge of this dep't. Let the provinces run it. Use the money you'd spend on it for tax relief so working families can at least have a parent at home. More socialist programs will only create more useless bureaucracies that the gov't can't seem to keep their spending down on.

Indian Affairs. Now here's a classic example of a funnel system. Tonnes of money goes in at the top and by the time it has to get down to the real needy aboriginals there's nothing left. It's time to get rid of the entire department of Indian Affairs. It does jack shit for aboriginals except waste money and time.

CBC. With no hockey, what's the point?

Health Care. Hello? I'm sick of hearing that we'll never have a private two-tier American style system. Well guess what folks? When you go to the local clinic for a checkup, it's a PRIVATE clinic but your Alberta Health Care Insurance picks up the tab. So why not MRIs or anything else? Is it so hard to figure out?

Oh, you know I could go on and on. Simply put: If you give me more of my money back, you won't be so inclined to waste it. It's human nature, but I forgot, Liberals aren't really human anyway -- they're stuck somewhere between a fossil and an old tree.