EDITORIAL
The war budget
Guns or butter? It is said that the government can spend its
tax revenues on one or the other, but not both.
The fascist governments in Europe claimed that they could do
both back during the great capitalist economic depression in
the 1930s.
In the current capitalist recession, the Bush administration
has offered a variation on the fascists' promises of the 1930s.
Bush thinks there's no reason to promise "butter" to the
workers. In fact, the Bush plan cuts social services and will
reduce benefits across the board for anyone making less than
$100,000 a year.
But the Bush plan does promise guns and butter. Only the
butter this time is for the rich.
Never before in history has a U.S. president offered such a
war budget as Bush's. The Bush budget calls for the biggest
increase ever for military spending, and expands spending for
repressive forces in the "homeland security" department. Yet it
does not include one cent for a war on Iraq or even a penny for
Afghanistan, either for its continued military occupation or
for any other kind of spending on Afghanistan.
Ignoring the so-called balanced budget law Congress passed
not too long ago, Bush's budget promises to create the biggest
deficit in U.S. history.
Usually presidents who propose war budgets and talk about
the deficits caused by war spending also talk about why they
have to raise taxes. But not Bush.
Bush is proposing to drastically cut all taxes paid by the
rich. So who is going to be made to pay? You already know the
answer.
It's not enough that a handful of Democrats have made some
mild criticisms of Bush's budget proposal. Something more
decisive must be done to avert this train wreck called Bush's
budget. There are already some who are calling for impeachment
of the president. That, at least, could start to put the brakes
on this coming disaster.
Raise your voice with a multitude of others in the week of
protests from Feb. 13-21 to demand money for jobs, education
and health care, not warfare. And cast your ballot in the
people's effort to impeach the war monger in the White House:
www.votetoimpeach.org.
Reprinted from the Feb. 13, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe to WW by Email: wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Donate to
support pro-labor, anti-war news.
Email
this article
Printable
page