Bush and the trillion dollars
Now you see it, now you don't
By Leslie Feinberg
It wasn't that long ago that the sharks on
Wall Street and the politicians in Washington were insisting
that social programs like welfare had to be cut back because
the economic health of the United States depended on balancing
the budget. "End deficit spending" was the mantra of the
conservatives. It became the rationale for big cuts in needed
social programs. For a few years toward the end of the
nineties, the government's debt was actually reduced.
But then came the big military buildup, the beefing up of
the domestic police agencies under the excuse of "homeland
security," the huge tax cuts to the rich, and a downturn in the
economy. The budget deficit began to grow sharply.
So, very quietly, President George W. Bush signed a bill on
May 27 that raises the federal government's debt limit by close
to $1 TRILLION.
That's a million times a million dollars.
Imagine the howls of indignation from the political
representatives of big business if this colossal amount of debt
were being contemplated in order to finance a federal jobs
program, or free medicines for those who can't afford them, or
a crash program to develop sustainable sources of energy.
But there have been no howls. Both Democrats and Republicans
have been very quiet about it. For not only is this money
earmarked for Bush's "endless war," it also has the blessings
of Wall Street.
The growing debt means the government will have to borrow
massive amounts of money. Wall Street is happy about that
because it means more interest to the banks. The prime interest
rate set by the Federal Reserve Bank is on the floor,
supposedly to get companies to borrow money and expand, but
lowering the rate hasn't led to an upturn in the economy
because businesses don't want to expand when the markets are
glutted. So the government will now be taking out huge loans--a
boon for the banking empire.
Why haven't the Democrats made a big noise about all this?
They usually claim to be the party that cares about workers and
the middle class--and an election year is looming.
The Democratic Party used to advocate government spending on
social programs as a means to stimulate the economy during
recessions. The irony of the present situation is that both
Democrats and Republicans hope that government spending will
work again--but the spending is on the military-industrial
complex and domestic repression, not on programs to help the
unemployed or improve health care or Social Security.
In fact, the capitalist economic slump is not based on lack
of cash or capital investment. It's rooted in the boom-and-bust
cycle of a profit-driven economy. The crisis is one of
over-production, of abundance.
Who will pay this debt? The government is making it crystal
clear that the "tax man" won't be hounding the rich or their
corporations and banks for it.
The very next day after Bush quietly signed the IOU for a
trillion dollars, he signed the third-largest tax cut in
history, making it a media event. However, it gives billions to
the wealthy elite and little or nothing to the workers and
poor, who are already being hit with increased local taxes,
mass transit hikes and other forms of taxation.
This is class warfare on the domestic front.
More than a half-million jobs have already been lost this
year and more than 8.7 million people are counted as
unemployed. That official figure doesn't count those who are
discouraged and have stop ped job hunting.
Wages are falling, across the board.
"The president is not calling his tax package the 'Windfall
for the Wealthy' act, which is what it is," observers Jared
Bern stein, an economist with the Washington-based Economic
Policy Institute. "He calls it the 'Jobs and Growth' act, which
is what it's not."
And when the yeas and nays were tallied, the tax measure
passed 58 to 33. Almost a quarter of the congressional votes
came from Democrats.
Those who voted for it made a big deal about an addition of
$400 to the child tax credit. But as soon as it passed, the
truth came out. The bill denies the credit to families with
incomes between $10,500 and $26,625. That's 12-16 million
kids--one out of every six children in the U.S. under the age
of 17, according to the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities.
About half of all African American and Latino children
either get no benefit, or a very meager allowance, from this
bill.
The legislation also leaves high and dry, without any tax
relief, some 8 million mostly low-income taxpayers who have no
children.
What would it have cost to pass on the extra $400 credit to
all families? $3.5 billion. But the legislators thought that
was just too extravagant.
However, House and Senate negotiators slashed provisions in
the bill that would have cracked down on corporate tax
shelters, blocked some accounting scams like those that
enriched Enron CEOs, prevented U.S. companies from creating
post-office box headquarters in offshore tax havens, and
limited bloated deferred-compensation plans for executives.
(New York Times, June 2)
That cost us $25 billion--and the corporations laughed all
the way to the bank.
Reprinted from the June 12, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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