Where your treasure is, so too is your heart. Our eyes roll over around federal budget numbers which are too big to understand — a one year budget of $2.5 trillion, a deficit of $427 trillion, military spending over $500 billion in one year.
But beneath the numbers are questions of what we value, what kind of society we are, what our priorities are. And in this regard, the budget President Bush submitted to Congress today is as shameful in its priorities as it is shameless in its dishonesty. He is the most anti-civil rights, anti-labor and anti-poor president in 75 years. He is the antithesis of all of what Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Lyndon Johnson stood for 40 years ago.
No budget occurs in a vacuum. Its priorities must relate in some way to the challenges facing the country. Over the last four years, poverty in America has risen by 14 percent. One in eight Americans now live in poverty; one in five children.
The number of Americans without health insurance — over 45 million and rising — has reached a new record. More Americans go hungry each day. Affordable housing is beyond the reach of more and more working Americans. The poorest Americans are falling further and further below the poverty line — while the richest Americans capture ever-increasing amounts of the national income and wealth. Over the last four years, we’ve weakened the floor under the poor and expanded the mansions of the rich.
We now face a record deficit. President Bush’s tax cuts — primarily for the rich — caused about half of that deficit, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which is headed by a Republican. Increased spending on war, the military and homeland security caused more than one-third. All increased spending on domestic entitlements and programs caused only about 15 percent. And of that, programs for the poor contributed even less.
Yet Bush’s budget essentially asks the poorest and weakest Americans to pay for the costs of his tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans. He calls for extending tax breaks permanently — even extending tax loopholes that benefit only the very wealthy. The rich will bear no burden. Under Bush, the U.S. will spend about as much money on its military as the rest of the world combined. Our Pentagon budget will be larger than the entire economy of Russia. And military spending will continue to rise.
It is the poor, the weak, the vulnerable, the young who will bear the greatest burden in paying for Bush’s top-end tax cuts. Housing vouchers will be cut for poor working families. Even Start, the literacy program for the poorest children, will be eliminated. Home heating aid will be cut for vulnerable seniors. Veterans will be hit with a $250 “user fee” if they want to use veterans’ health care. Food stamps will be cut by over $1 billion over the next five years. Medical care for the poor, the disabled, the elderly, the young — Medicaid — will be slashed $44 billion over 10 years. Those with the greatest need will lose out; those with the greatest clout will benefit.
The administration is understandably sensitive to this reality. Like the hypocrites that the Bible warns about, administration spokespeople claim that, as Vice President Cheney said yesterday, they are “not turning out backs on the poor.” No, not turning their backs, just stepping on their necks.
The immoral priorities of this budget are mirrored by the callous dishonesty that surrounds it. The president insists that these sacrifices are needed to cut the deficit in half over five years. But he does not count in his budget his major foreign policy initiative, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (at about $100 billion a year), nor his major domestic policy initiative, the privatization of Social Security — which Vice President Cheney admits will require borrowing “trillions” over the next decades ($4.5 trillion over 20 years for starters). He does not count the full cost of making his tax cuts permanent. The poor will be trampled, but the deficits will continue to grow.
This was the stated strategy of right-wing zealots like Grover Norquist all along. Cut taxes, largely for the most affluent Americans. Drive up deficits. Force the poor and working Americans to pay for the tax breaks in cuts in vital programs. Hide these realities in a fog of sanctimonious rhetoric. Judge a tree, says the Bible, not by the bark that it wears but by the fruit that it bears. By this standard, I shudder for our country if Congress accepts President Bush’s budget.