Rightward shift continues
Clinton budget bows to Republican pressure
By Fred Goldstein
Amid all the political turbulence in Washington surrounding
the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, there is a steady
undercurrent pushing capitalist politics, economics and foreign
policy steadily to the right.
What the working class should keep its eye on is not the
faction fight between the Republicans and Democrats over
removing Clinton, but the concrete attacks by both parties
against the masses of people at home and abroad.
One case in point is Clinton's latest budget. The
administration, with much fanfare, has presented it as carrying
out the "people's agenda." But even before the details of this
budget are revealed, its broad outline shows how anti-working
class it really is.
Out of $1.77 trillion in the budget overall--a staggering
sum!--interest to the bankers and bondholders will be $200
billion. The Pentagon appropriation will be $260 billion--not
counting all the special military items that get added during
the year.
This means that, even before a penny is spent for the rest
of the population, one fourth of the entire federal budget is
earmarked for the military-industrial complex and the rich
coupon clippers.
Clinton has boasted about his balanced budget and a
projected $112 billion budget surplus for the coming year. But
the budget was balanced by cutting social programs way back.
Now, with 50 million people in this country living at or near
the poverty level, and with one quarter of the children going
to bed hungry, Clinton is sitting on this money, allegedly to
"save Social Security."
The cry of "save Social Security" was first raised by giant
brokerage houses, including Merrill Lynch and the Blackstone
Group, and by right-wing think tanks such as the Cato
Institute. The aim was to start a panic that would lead to
investing Social Security funds in the stock market.
Many economists in the labor movement dispute the very idea
that Social Security needs saving. But even if it did need to
be saved, the simplest and most equitable way would be to make
the millionaires and billionaires pay by lifting the cap that
now limits how much of their income is taxed. Raising wages
would also help.
Instead, Clinton is sitting on this $112 billion surplus to
accumulate it as part of his plan to invest $700 billion of
Social Security money in the stock market.
One of the reasons so much poverty persists in this country
despite the capitalist economic boom is that Clinton and Newt
Gingrich balanced the budget by destroying welfare, cutting
public housing spending to zero, cutting spending on education
and wrecking social services all around.
Now Clinton is trying to sound like a great hero for
restoring a small part of what he took away.
For example, school class sizes have mushroomed during the
Clinton administration. Now he claims his budget will provide
funds for 100,000 teachers to reduce class sizes.
The problem with this demagogy is that there are about
115,000 elementary and secondary schools in the U.S. This
program, even if achieved, would average not even one teacher
per school.
Driving millions off the welfare rolls has created a huge
increase in demand for childcare. How else are women heads of
household able to work? Clinton's budget for childcare credits
for the parents of millions of children comes to $6.3
billion--less than half the $12 billion increase the Pentagon
will get.
Close to 70 million school children will receive $30 billion
while Lockheed-Martin, Raytheon, General Electric, Boeing and
their cohorts in the military-industrial complex will get
hundreds of billions.
The $1,000 tax credit Clinton proposes to help families with
long-term health care covers at best a few weeks of nursing
home fees or home nursing care to deal with illnesses that can
last years.
This analysis can be extended to the entire budget to show
that the masses get the window dressing and the capitalist
class gets the lion's share. It is clearly the bosses, the
bankers, the stockbrokers and the generals who are driving the
budgetary process. Clinton is their willing instrument.
A winning formula
The resistance by the big bourgeoisie to ousting Clinton
flows from the fact that they have hit upon a winning formula
for this period of reaction.
They have a Democratic president who is completely amenable
to allowing the capitalists to grab as much as they can, while
being restrained by the Republican majority should he come
under pressure from progressive forces.
Furthermore, the bosses are insulated from mass protest
against the regime because the Democratic Party, through its
ties to grassroots organizations all over the country, serves
to hold the movement in check. It argues that protest is
dangerous because the Republicans are worse and further to the
right.
This formula has sustained a steady move to the right. It
works well for a period of capitalist boom and a low level of
mass resistance. The ruling class sees no reason to change
it.
Indeed, Rep. Dick Gephardt of Indiana, who ran for president
in 1996 and was expected to run again next year, is about to
back out of the race. His reputation for flirting with the
labor movement put him out of favor with the New Democrats and
their ruling class backers, led by Clinton, who broke
Democratic Party tradition and assiduously avoided open
association with the AFL-CIO. Gephardt now claims he wants to
be Speaker of the House.
Another casualty of the new right-wing atmosphere is Paul
Wellstone of Minnesota, who announced a few months ago that he
would run for president but now has announced that he is
dropping out already. Wellstone is a liberal critic of Clinton
best known for introducing a bill for national health care that
rivaled Clinton's ill-fated health care plan. Wellstone claimed
a bad back, but more likely he has an empty wallet due to lack
of big business contributors.
Vice President Albert Gore, a charter member of the New
Democrats who is to the right of Clinton, would fit well as
Clinton's successor under present circumstances.
Not that Gephardt, Wellstone or any of their like would be
the saviors of the working class. Neither they nor any other
politician has protested the plying of the military with money.
Clinton's promise to give the Pentagon $1.2 trillion by 2005
speaks to the steady impoverishment of the workers and the
oppressed at home, whose needs will be sacrificed on the altar
of militarism. It is also clearly preparation for a new and
even more aggressive phase of U.S. imperialist aggression and
expansion around the world, made more urgent by the spreading
capitalist economic crisis.
The daily bombing of Iraq, the mobilization to dismember
Yugoslavia by sending occupation forces into Kosovo, the
criminal attack on the Sudan--or any of the other acts of
imperialist aggression carried out by Clinton and the Pentagon
in the midst of the impeachment crisis--are only a prelude to
the next phase of military expansion as the Pentagon builds new
fighter planes, new missiles, new communications and spotting
devices.
ABM system--a new menace
In fact, Clinton's budget allocates funds to one of the most
warlike acts since the U.S. decided to expand NATO: the
beginning of an anti-ballistic missile system. And it hasn't
drawn a peep from any politician in Washington.
Secretary of Defense William Cohen announced several weeks
ago that the Pentagon was going ahead with a missile defense
system. If necessary, he said, the U.S. would pull out of the
anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia that had been signed
back in 1972 with the Soviet Union.
Using the phony pretext of defending the U.S. against the
Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea or Iran, Clinton's budget
has money to erect a missile defense system. Such a weapons
system has always been understood as preparation for a first
nuclear strike. When Reagan announced his Star Wars ABM system,
it almost led to a complete rupture with the USSR.
The plan to build such a system is a
follow-up to bringing Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic
into NATO and is part of the Hitler-like "expand to the east"
long-term strategy of the Pentagon, as well as an immediate
threat to the DPRK. But such outrageous right-wing acts have
become par for the course in Washington in the wake of the
collapse of the USSR. And it is this right-wing current that
has flowed steadily beneath the stormy waters of the
impeachment crisis.
The only thing that can shatter this atmosphere is the
awakening of the mass movement and a full-scale mobilization
against the unholy alliance of the big business parties, the
Republicans and Democrats in Washington, and their united front
against the peoples of the world. This is what must be on the
mind of all enemies of exploitation and oppression.
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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