The Bush Budget: Carnival of the Oppressor
by John Lacny, March 23, 2002
Forget all the hoopla about the 'war on terrorism'; there is only one war for which the Supreme Court chose Bush the Younger as president: a one-sided class war against the majority of this country's people. His proposed budget reflects this.
Bush proposes a $46 billion increase in military spending for fiscal year 2003, which brings total military spending to $396.8 billion, little of which has anything to do with 'defense.'
Most prominently, to say that the $15.6 billion devoted to nuclear weapons will improve the security of literally anyone on the planet is nothing short of insane. The same goes for the $7.8 billion devoted to so-called 'national missile defense' and any number of military projects which serve the interests of no one but politically-connected contractors.
The increase in military spending alone is more than the federal government spends on elementary, secondary, and vocational education combined. You may be wondering who is going to pay for all of this, but Bush answered that question last year with his massive tax cut for the highest income brackets: the poorer you are, the more of the burden you'll be expected to share.
Using numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that the top one percent of tax-filers receive about one-third of the benefits of Bush's tax-cut package, or roughly twice as much as the bottom 60 percent. In other words, the 1.3 million richest tax-filers receive twice as much in tax cuts as the poorest 78 million tax-filers combined.
Technically the tax cuts are supposed to expire in 2010, but Bush proposes to make them permanent, including outright gifts to the wealthy like the repeal of the estate tax.
What would this mean over the long haul? Well, do you remember how they're predicting a shortfall in the Social Security Trust Fund over the next 75 years because of an ageing population? If made permanent, the cost of the tax cut will be twice the size of that predicted shortfall. Tell that to the next person who tries to sell you on Social Security privatization.
Meanwhile, as the National Priorities Project documents, the Bush regime is putting on a fine display of its commitment to national unity by slashing unemployment benefits and worker retraining programs. In real terms (i.e., when inflation is taken into account) the Bush budget cuts funding for unemployment compensation by 11 percent and cuts funding for job training for dislocated workers under the Workforce Investment Act by 12.5 percent.
Apologists for this shameless shafting of unemployed and displaced workers will probably argue that the recession is now over. This conveniently ignores the fact that the wealthiest members of this society never really experienced the recession, especially with the veritable keg-party Bush has organized for them at the expense of the rest of us. But even with the recession 'over' and profits up, job growth is likely to remain sluggish for a longer period.
And those lucky enough to find a job will be less likely to find a decent one. The Bush budget cuts funding for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) by $9 million and eliminates 83 positions at that agency, thus ensuring even less enforcement of basic safety and health standards in the workplace. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH)--the only health research agency with a focus on worker safety--is cut by $28.3 million.
Remember when the government promptly evacuated (mostly white) Capitol Hill staffers during the anthrax scare while treating the situation of (often non-white) postal workers as something less than the emergency it was? Well, Bush's budget symbolically gives the finger to people like that once again.
The AFL-CIO has done a fascinating breakdown of the proposed funding within these agencies, and here the picture becomes even worse. So while OSHA funding in general is cut, there is an increase in OSHA programs to help employers comply with the laws they ought to be obeying in the first place. And while Labor Department functions that protect workers are cut, there is a substantial increase in funding for federal investigations of labor unions.
There's no word on an increase in funding for investigations of people who raise issues with the budget, but that's probably not far behind.