One of the few positive things that can be said of President Bush’s 2009 budget is that it reveals the outrageous priorities of the Republican Party as America dashes through the high-stakes 2008 campaign.

The GOP candidate(s) are going to have to decide whether to use the dead-on-arrival Bush budget as a punching bag or an embarrassing political imprecation from which they should run at full speed.

The Bush budget is devoid of commitment to the public welfare, revealing an ideologue’s mind-set to slash at anything that collectively advances human concerns.

From today’s NYT:

… Predictably, the big losers in Mr. Bush’s budget are domestic-spending programs — including medical research, environmental protection and education — which will either be held flat or cut.

Even more predictably, most of Mr. Bush’s touted savings would come from programs intended to protect the country’s most vulnerable citizens: the elderly, the poor and the disabled. …