March 14, 2007 5:10PM # How Dumb Do They Think We Are? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE For the past six years Democrats have railed against President Bush’s gimmicky, deceptive, wildly unbalanced budgets. Now that they control Congress, they have the power to write their own budgets. And what have they come up with? [As the *Washington Post* explains](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/13/AR2007031301763.html), > Senate Democrats unveiled a spending blueprint yesterday that envisions a massive expansion of the nation’s health-insurance program for children, as well as billions of additional dollars for other domestic priorities such as public education, veterans’ health care and local police. > > > Despite the additional spending, Sen. Kent Conrad (D‑N.D.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the proposal would virtually erase the federal deficit within four years without raising taxes and produce a surplus of $132 billion by 2012. It’s not true that politicians never learn anything. Conrad and his colleagues have learned a great deal from Bush and his budget spinners. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).