Bush’s budget plan

There is nothing more political than the budget of a capitalist government. And the budget that the Bush administration has submitted to Congress truly embodies the reactionary politics of the White House. Hundreds of billions of dollars for present and future wars. Hundreds of billions in tax cuts for the super rich. Cutbacks and hardship for the workers and the poor.

The proposed $2.7 trillion budget gives $439 billion to the Pentagon, an increase of 6.9 percent. In addition, there is $120 billion more in “emergency” funds for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The total military spending will be $560 billion this year alone.

There is $84 billion for weapons and $73 billion for weapons development. This does not count the estimated $5 billion for nuclear weapons development that goes to the Energy Department.

The stocks of the corporations of the military-industrial complex are going to rise based on the upcoming lush handouts. No weapons system was cut and new weapons systems were funded. Boeing will get $3.5 billion to make 42 advanced F/A -18 Navy fighter jets. General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman will get $2.5 billion for joint development of two new high-tech DDX Navy destroyers. The two corporations will also get $2.4 billion for a Virginia-class attack submarine.

Textron subsidiary Bell Helicopter will replace the CH-46 transport helicopters damaged in Iraq with new V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft for the Marines. Lockheed will get contracts for more C-130 cargo planes. Appropriations for missile systems will rise from $8 billion to $10 billion.

The active-duty military forces are scheduled for a slight reduction but the Special Forces such as Army Green Berets and Navy Seals are going to be strengthened. The Marines are going to get their own special operations unit. These forces are going to be trained for interventions in the oppressed countries and for training counter-revolutionary forces of client states of the U.S. government. This is part of the Rumsfeld “transformation” of lighter, more mobile and lethal units to respond to threats to U.S. imperialist interests any place on the globe.

But this spending on military “shock and awe” will not stop the struggle. The bud get is meant to add new terror wea pons and bolster “special operations.” How ever, the combination of military might and Special Forces has not been able to subdue the Iraqi resistance and deliver the country into the hands of the U.S. oil giants, transnational corporations and the Pentagon.

Furthermore, despite the threats to use the U.S. military arsenal, the peoples of the Middle East have not been intimidated. On the contrary, Washington has experienced one setback after another since its post-Sept. 11 offensive to recolonize the region under U.S. rule. Fighting is now raging at unprecedented levels against the U.S.-NATO occupation forces in southern and western Afghan istan. The attempt to destabilize the Syrian government has failed so far. Washington branded Hezbollah in Lebanon as a “terrorist” organization and demanded that it be disarmed. But its popularity as a national liberation organization is as strong as ever. And the overwhelming victory of Hamas in the Palestinian elections was a vote against U.S.-backed Israeli colonialism and occupation.

Now Washington is facing the intransigence of the Iranian people and its government. Iran will not surrender its hard-won national sovereignty by giving up its right to nuclear energy at the dictate of U.S. imper ialism and its European junior partners.

Iran defends its sovereignty

Washington has threatened the Iranian government with sanctions and military action for two-and-a-half years. It has been maneuvering to bring Iran before the United Nations Security Council and has finally succeeded.

But just as the Bush group totally miscalculated the anti-colonial spirit of the Iraqi people and the Palestinian people, they have totally underestimated the spirit of anti-U.S. resistance of the Iranian people.

Washington counted it as a great victory that it twisted the arms of China and Russia to join the so-called Euro 3—France, Germany and Great Britain—in backing the referral of Iran to the Security Council. The U.S. imperialists thought that this would bring unbearable diplomatic and political pressure on the Iranian government to reverse course. Instead, the Iranian government has stood up to the so-called “great powers” and announced its intention to resume experimentation with uranium enrichment.

The government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, with virtual universal support among the population, has declared that Iran will never give up its right to peaceful nuclear technology. The development of nuclear technology has been on hold in Iran since the 1979 revolution that overthrew the U.S. puppet Shah and nationalized U.S. oil holdings.

Commander in Chief George W. Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have been issuing warnings that “the world” will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

In the first place, Iran has declared its intention to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. It is allowed to use and encouraged to use peaceful nuclear energy under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, of which it is a member.

But if the Iranian government—seeing the Israeli Zionist state armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons, and what happened to Iraq after it allowed itself to be disarmed by the U.N. operating under the instructions of the U.S.—should decide to acquire a nuclear weapon as a matter of self-defense, it has the right as a formerly oppressed nation in the struggle against imperialism and Zionism. It is Washing ton, with its 10,000 nuclear warheads and its current program to develop new nuclear weapons, that is the prime candidate for being brought before the Inter national Atomic Energy Agency.

‘Regime change’ dropped from Pentagon report

This latest crisis is the culmination of a campaign that was begun by the Bush administration after 9/11. The White House was riding high after the invasion of Afghanistan and the demonstration of all its “smart bombs,” killer gunships, 15,000-lb. “daisy cutter” bombs and Predator drones against a defenseless population with no army. It threatened Iraq with the terror visited on Afghanistan.

Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and company promised that “shock and awe” would bring Iraq to its knees and the next stop on the road to conquest would be Iran—part of Bush’s “axis of evil” which was on the list for “regime change” along with Syria and North Korea.

Since then, the Bush administration has been stalemated on every front. It is beset with crises of its own making that have forced a shift in the Pentagon. In its recently released Quadrennial Defense Review—a forward strategy report to Congress—the reference to “regime change” that was in the 2001 strategy report was conspicuously missing. The strategy report accompanies the military budget.

While there is money in the budget for special forces and special operations and “irregular warfare”—i.e., counterinsurgency—the Pentagon brass has no intention of being tied to the neo-con doctrines. It is not that the generals are opposed in principle to the doctrine. But they do not want to experience anything like the disastrous adventure in Iraq again any time soon.

The Los Angeles Times carried a dispatch dated Jan. 24 that quoted a Penta gon official working on the Quadrennial Defense Review who characterized Iraq as “clearly a one-off.” The official added, “There is certainly no intention to do it again. The human and financial costs of the war have made many senior generals eager to turn the page on Iraq.”

Bush’s budget is meant to tell the world that in spite of the disaster in Iraq, Wash ing ton still has the determination to rule the world and is making full-scale military preparations. In fact, many of these large weapons systems are meant for combat with large militaries. And one clear target of this large-scale military development is the Peoples Republic of China. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has described China as a “threat” and the Quadrennial Defense Review also mentions China.

But this new budget cannot bring victory over the people of the world and it is bound to increase social and class tensions in the U.S.

Budget a full-scale attack on the poor

While the proposed budget will fill the vaults of the merchants of death, it is designed to empty the pockets of the poor. The Center on Budget and Policy Prior ities, a major liberal think tank, did a preliminary overview of the budget. (www.cbpp.org/2-6-06bud.htm)

A sample of their findings should ring alarm bells in the labor movement, among community organizations and in the anti-war movement.

The budget would cut $27 billion from social programs in 2007 and a total of $165 billion by 2011. This would amount to a 13 percent cut. “Cuts would be made in hundreds of domestic discretionary programs across the budget including education programs, environmental protection programs, numerous programs to assist low-income families, children, and elderly and disabled people, and research related to cancer, heart disease, and other medical conditions,” states the report.

Among the programs with deep cuts:

* Section 2 housing for low—income elderly—a 26 percent cut.

* Section 811 housing for low-income peo ple with disabilities—a 50 percent cut.

* The Community Development Block Grant program—a 30 percent cut.

* The Child Care and Development Block Grant program would face cuts of $1.03 billion in the next five years. This means that the number of children receiving child care assistance would drop by 400,000 by 2011 compared to 2005.

* The Social Services Block Grant, which provides funding to states for social services for low-income and vulnerable populations, would be cut by 30 percent or $500 million.

* Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income children, parents, seniors and people with disabilities, would lose $13.8 billion in five years through combined funding cuts and regulatory changes.

Other programs would be terminated altogether. For example:

* The Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides
nutritional food packages for less than $20 a month to more than 400,000 low-income elderly people, one-third of whom are over 75.

* The Preventative Care Block Grant, which is operated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and provide grants to states for preventative health services
for poor populations.

* The TRIO Talent Search program, under which colleges and universities—in many cases historically Black colleges and universities—assist disadvantaged secondary school students to prepare for college.

* The Community Services Block Grant, which provides funding for a variety of social services and other types of assistance to low-income families and elderly and disabled people.

If the budget is enacted, it would give an average of $136,000 in tax relief for people who make over $1 million a year. Making the cuts permanent would hand these millionaires $900 billion in the next ten years. More than $600 billion of this would go to the .2 percent of the super-rich families making over a million dollars a year. (Urban Institute-Brookings Institu tion on Tax Policy)

The budget is inherently racist. African-Americans, Latin@s and other nationalities are disproportionately poor, have lower wages, worse living conditions and are therefore in greater need of the social services being slashed by the Bush budget.

The Iraq War is a net loss to U.S. imperialism, which is spending the U.S. Trea sury to get Iraqi oil and territory. But only the military contractors are making any money out of the war. The treasury is being drained to the tune of $10 billion a month. The same can be said of the war in Afghanistan. U.S. finance capital has been stymied in its drive to recolonize the Middle East.

But it is carrying out a campaign of economic aggression against the population on the home front on behalf of the Wall Street and corporate big business. Bush’s budget is a major offensive in that domestic war. It is a transfer of money from the mass of the people to the military-industrial complex and to the millionaires and billionaires of the ruling class. This is Bush’s real base.

But the Democrats are not the answer.

The only road for the workers and the oppressed is to mount a determined counter-offensive. The Democratic Party has voted for every war appropriation. It has let the Bush administration have its way without much more than a whimpering and totally ineffective protest, put up for the benefit of their constituents. There has been not one ounce of genuine struggle because the Democrats serve the same corporate masters that Bush and the Republicans do.

The labor unions, community organizations, anti-war groups, environmental groups, anti-racist groups and liberation organizations of all types must forge a broad, independent united front to beat back this offensive by Bush and the ruling class.