a budget is all about priorities, about giving voice to purpose, literally putting your money where your mouth is. Rhetoric and platitudes wither in the face of spread sheets. Put up or shut up.
Not that we need any more evidence of where bush stands in the conflict of workers versus bosses. But the numbers and sheer audacity of what he is proposing for the 2007 budget are staggering, especially for a president with the lowest approval ratings in history. Ever since he usurped the election of 2000, bush has been on a mad dash to squeeze every dollar out of the heart and bone of every worker and loot as much wealth as possible from the environment. And since then he's gone faster and madder, as if the time is running out to do as much damage as possible.
The vicious inhumanity of his plan is almost inconceivable. But its singular focus, its unwavering aim at workers and the poor, cannot be motivated by anything less than class hatred, even by someone as delusional as bush.
The biggest cuts directly target the health and lives of workers-$36 billion taken from the medicare program over the next five years, another $12 billion sucked from medicaid over the same peiod, and funding stripped from all OSHA (Occupational Safety & Health Assn.) worker safety training programs.
Bush plans to cut $3.1 billion from the Dept. of Education in just 2007 alone, much of that in student loans. And he wants to reduce the Environmental Protection Agency's budget in 2007 by another $300 million, most of that in cuts aimed at water and air pollution.
At a time when poverty is rising, job growth is the worst since the great depression and the gap between the rich and the poor continues to grow, he wants to cut or eliminate employment training and placement programs. And as free trade agreements cause more losses of decent-paying manufacturing jobs, he proposes mor cuts in the Trade Adjustment Assistance Program that is supposed to provide income support and retraining for workers whose jobs are outsourced.
Perversely, whats making these cuts appear necessary are bush's other cuts, his tax cuts for the rich. Just as the temporary authorization for those cuts are about to expire, he is proposing to make them permanent, costing the US Treasury $1.35 trillion over the next 10 years, more than enough to pay for all the medicare and medicaid cuts and prop up social security at the same time.
Then there's the unbudgeted expense of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars-$350 billion in just 'supplemental' funds for 3003-2006 with another $50 billion already requested for 2007 and counting. the war has brought nothing but death, destruction and misery. It is destroying the American economy and has already destroyed Iraq's. Polls show the majority of americans, including a majority of the military, want the war ended. And a majority believe Iraq will descend into civil war, as if that isn't already happening. The republicans are dizzy trying to spin this one into a successful midterm election strategy.
But talk is cheap. Actions speak louder than words. Take some.
-Steve Stallone
editor The Dispatcher ILWU's monthly news source
