It's budget time again and this one ranks very rank. As Ed Schwartz pointed out in the American Prospect:
"George Bush now gives us an annual laundry list of programs that he wants Congress to cut. The basic philosophy of the Bush administration seems to be that while it's an honor to die for your country, it's an imposition to pay for it."
Here's the budget and supporting documents.
Just to get us started, the Times weighs in, pointing out that:
The budget is based on a series of improbable, if not dishonest, assumptions. To make it appear as if the tax cuts are affordable in the near term, it assumes that the Pentagon will not spend a single penny on Iraq or Afghanistan after 2009. It also assumes there will be no costs for fixing the alternative minimum tax after this year, even though Mr. Bush and virtually every politician in America is committed to such relief. The new budget would also slash key entitlement programs and punish many of the country’s most vulnerable citizens..
As Firedoglake notes, It's the Enron Federal Budget process — bilking the public and lying to them at the same time. Welcome to Bushworld, where everyone but the cronies gets screwed. And, even worse, as Deborah Solomon points out in the WSJ, the thing on which the Bush budget most relies: hoping for a lot of luck. Wait, isn't that our policy in Iraq, too? Oversight, anyone?
Before we get depressed one of my favorite writers, Matt Taibbi, who wrote Spanking the Donkey a great history of the 2004 presidential campaign, tackles the budget.
In the recent issue of Rolling Stone also reprinted at Alternet, he writes about the current Bush budget and the funding priorities. While talk about the war, the environment, and human trafficking gets me moving, Matt makes a compelling case. In fact, this budget may be the most anti-Christ-like thing we face (Matthew 25:31-46).
Here's some evidence:
On the same day that Britney was shaving her head, a guy I know who works in the office of Senator Bernie Sanders sent me an email. He was trying very hard to get news organizations interested in some research his office had done about George Bush's proposed 2008 budget, which was unveiled two weeks ago and received relatively little press, mainly because of the controversy over the Iraq war resolution. All the same, the Bush budget is an amazing document. It would be hard to imagine a document that more clearly articulates the priorities of our current political elite.
Not only does it make many of Bush's tax cuts permanent, but it envisions a complete repeal of the Estate Tax, which mainly affects only those who are in the top two-tenths of the top one percent of the richest people in this country. The proposed savings from the cuts over the next decade are about $442 billion, or just slightly less than the amount of the annual defense budget (minus Iraq war expenses). But what's interesting about these cuts are how Bush plans to pay for them.
If the Estate Tax were to be repealed completely, the estimated savings to just one family -- the Walton family, the heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune -- would be about $32.7 billion dollars over the next ten years.
The proposed reductions to Medicaid over the same time frame? $28 billion.
Or how about this: if the Estate Tax goes, the heirs to the Mars candy corporation -- some of the world's evilest scumbags, incidentally, routinely ripped by human rights organizations for trafficking in child labor to work cocoa farms in places like Cote D'Ivoire -- if the estate tax goes, those assholes will receive about $11.7 billion in tax breaks. That's more than three times the amount Bush wants to cut from the VA budget ($3.4 billion) over the same time period. Cox family (Cox cable TV) receives $9.7 billion tax break while education would get $1.5 billion in cuts. Nordstrom family (Nordstrom dept. stores) receives $826.5 million tax break while Community Service Block Grants would be eliminated, a $630 million cut.
[snip]
the family of former Exxon/Mobil CEO Lee Raymond, who received a $400 million retirement package, would receive about $164 million in tax breaks. Compare that to the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which Bush proposes be completely eliminated, at a savings of $108 million over ten years. The program sent one bag of groceries per month to 480,000 seniors, mothers and newborn children.
Taibbi adds, "Somehow, to me, that's the worst one on the list. Here you have the former CEO of a company that scored record profits even as it gouged consumers, with gas prices rising more than 70 percent since January of 2001. There is a direct correlation between the avarice of oil company executives and the increased demand for federal aid for heating oil programs like LIHEAP, and yet the federal government wants to reward these same executives for raising prices on the backs of consumers."
Not to sound self-righteous but I am reminded of those words of Bush's favorite philosopher who promised to say in the end:
"Come, enter the Kingdom. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was sick and you visited me." Then Jesus will turn to those on His left hand and say, "Depart from me because I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me to drink, I was sick and you did not visit me." These will ask Him, "When did we see You hungry, or thirsty or sick and did not come to Your help?" And Jesus will answer them, "Whatever you neglected to do unto one of these least of these, you neglected to do unto Me!"
