The Budget Ads are Better than the Super Bowl Ads

It seems the Administration has discovered a new deficit-reduction technique that just might work: Why not sell advertising right in the middle of the federal budget documents? If they can put ads at eye-level in men's rooms, and on airline baggage carousels, why not? And, needless to say, there are cash-rich advertisers who would love to buy space in a document that's been considered reliable and respected since 1948. For example, there's a little corporation called Bush-Cheney '04, Inc. that's sitting on about $100 million in cash and needs to boost a sinking brand name.

That's the only explanation for this, which jumped out from the section of the budget entitled "Upholding America's Values":

Good company. President Bush visits the St. Augustine Parish Hunger Center in Cleveland, Ohio in May 2001.

or this:

Caring for our seniors. President Bush meets with 94 year old Anna Tovcimak after a roundtable discussion on Medicare Liability Reform in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

or this:

Listen first, then act. President Bush takes a private moment to discuss Medicare. In December 2003 the President signed into law the first major improvement in Medicare since 1965.

or this:

Ready to read. President Bush helps a child with a reading assignment at Sullivant Elementary School in Columbus, Ohio.

The federal budget is far from a neutral statement of accounts. Of course it's an argument for the direction that the president wants to take the country. I've said before that it's a political document, and should be. But it is still a budget. It's not a campaign brochure. It's not an occasion to tout that the President "Listens, then acts" (even if there were the slightest reason to think that he or Congress listened to seniors in designing the Medicare bill), or reads to kids, or provides "good company" for hungry people!

The first Bush budget, for Fiscal Year 2003, was full of cartoons, including one depicting government as a bunch of Lilliputians tying down the American people. This one is full of these ridiculous campaign photos. No president in history has produced budgets like this, and there should be a little more outrage about this. Or, the Bush-Cheney Committee should just pay for the ads and maybe we'll reduce the deficit by 0.000003 percent.