February 11, 2005
Republican budget represents class war.
Paul Krugman's latest column,
Bush's Class-War Budget, shows how the proposed budget systematically takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It literally takes food out of the mouth of babies and gives cash to billionaires.
It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.
First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.
And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.
More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.
It so happens that the number of taxpayers with more than $1 million in annual income is about the same as the number of people who would have their food stamps cut off under the Bush proposal. But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000.
It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.
It's a good analysis. I have to disagree a bit with the emphasis on making it "Bush's budget". It's not "Bush's budget" at all. It's AMERICA'S budget. It represents the views of nearly all of the Republicans in Congress as well as those of the majority of the Democrats. This is not Bush's individual initiative; it's a group agenda, which clearly and indisputably represents the views and goals of the millions of America's upper class. For upper class multimillionaires such as Kennedy, Kerry, Clinton, Pelosi, and many others to suggest otherwise is rank hypocrisy. They could stop it if they really wanted to. But they won't since they're going to profit from it big time.
I also emphasize this to get it across that eliminating Bush won't change anything. They'll just get someone else, and the juggernaut will continue rolling. Clinton may have come up with a budget surplus during the boom, but the gap between rich and poor accelerated during his administration. Drastically so. And that would have continued if Kerry had won. Krugman wants to believe that the Democrats are part of the solution, not part of the problem, and that this gives them an opportunity. But the truth is most of the them, at least nearly all in the leadership, are part of the problem. But maybe Howard Dean will take them on. It'd have to be the first step if he really wants to accomplish anything.
Those Democrats who do think that this ridiculous excuse for an economic plan gives them an opportunity, might begin by rebranding it as the REPUBLICAN BUDGET, not Bush's. It's the REPUBLICAN'S WAR, not Bush's. And so on.
