Political Tidbit - NOT about the election

...it's about the budget. I was surprised to see that the White House is looking for a domestic spending freeze to attempt to balance the budget by 2012. I could rant for a long time, but instead, I'll leave it to a few questions:

1. Now the Bush administration thinks it is a good time to cut back spending? Well into his lame duck years?!
   
2. Spending on border security is going up. This is purely political. Has to be. There is no evidence that the border is any more broken than it was last year and spending on it went nowhere then...so why now?
   
3. Will less government spending improve the economy or make it worse? I don't know and clearly the WH doesn't know, given that it just endorsed a several $B tax rebate and now wants to slow spending. So which is it?
   
4. The cuts are coming from domestic programs, largely Medicare ($170B). With Doctors alreay under a huge crunch turning away medicare patients, do we really need to be injecting more stress into this system? Further, the amount cut from Medicare nears the amount spent on the tax rebate. Mr. Bush, you have my permission to take that money and re-task it from those of us unable to afford our $60/mo HD + DVR + sports package cable/internet packages to those of us suffering under long wait times, hassled care givers, and poor insurance coverage.