Congressman Dennis Cardoza
18th Congressional District of California

“The president has offered Congress a budget that shortchanges rural America, allows the national debt to grow year after year, and is intellectually dishonest by hiding the costs of the president’s major initiatives,” said Cardoza, co-chair of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Coalition.  “If we continue to ignore the long term consequences of our budgetary actions, we will be forcing our children and grandchildren to pay a steep price for the deficits we create today.”

The actual deficit outlook over the next several years could be considerably worse than the administration’s 2006 budget estimate.  If Congress enacts the president’s priorities outlined last week in the State of the Union such as Social Security reform and extension of the tax cuts, and additional supplemental spending requests for Iraq and Afghanistan, the actual deficit situation in the coming years will grow considerably worse.   

Making matters worse, to pay for the president’s hidden initiatives, funding is being cut in areas that are critical to the Central Valley.  Of particular concern to Cardoza is the poor treatment of agriculture in the budget.

“The president continues to target agriculture for the biggest cuts,” Cardoza added.  “This budget is unfair to farmers across the country and hits us particularly hard in California.  Farmers in our state depend on research, protections against invasive species, grants for water and land conservation, and dependable access to markets, but this budget works against them in all of these areas.  We need to send a message to this administration to stop taking advantage of American farmers.”