[GranniesAgainstGeorge] Molly Ivins

[Guest guest]

M

 

 

Sun, 13 Feb 2005 11:14:24 -0600

[GranniesAgainstGeorge] Molly Ivins

 

 

AUSTIN, Texas -- I feel snakebit about praising any proposal by George

W. Bush. Every time I write a column saying, " Look, he's done

something good! " he does something else that makes it either not so

good or just plain bad. He welched on his deal with Ted Kennedy in the

Lots of Children Left Behind Act, now underfunded by $12 billion. And

nobody has ever seen that $15 billion he promised to fight AIDS in Africa.

 

The hideous Medicare prescription drug benefit, perhaps the most

obscenely deformed legislation I've ever seen written, in addition to

being a mother lode for the drug companies now turns out not to cost

the promised $400 billion over 10 years but a whopping $1.2 trillion.

(For those of you who are fans of the Department of Great Big Numbers,

the administration is now estimating there will be " offsets " to the

prescription drug fiasco that will reduce the $1.2 trillion to a mere

$720 billion. Remember when they tried to fire that whistleblower who

said it would cost at least $530 billion? And don't count on those

offsets. These folks have remarkable imaginations -- they're counting

as certain revenue $1 billion from oil drilling in ANWR (Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge), something Congress has rejected for the

last four years.)

 

All that said, I did find a good idea in Bush's budget -- putting a

lower cap on farm subsidies. Three-fourths of federal crop subsidies

go to the wealthiest 10 percent of agriculture businesses. This is not

a red state-blue state issue. Two-thirds of American farms -- those

run by families and small operators -- do not qualify for subsidies at

all. For years, agribusiness has successfully hidden behind the sacred

shield of " the family farmer, " who is still getting screwed. It's a

monumental rip-off, made worse by a loophole that has allowed some

huge agribusiness firms to collect millions of dollars a year by

disguising themselves as several corporations. Farm conservation

programs make much more sense and do benefit family farmers.

 

And that said, what a sham, what a rotten, phony, fake document this

2006 budget is.

 

In the first place, they're trying to fool you into thinking the

deficit is less than it is by using a fake number from the previous

year -- an early deficit estimate set way high so they could claim the

deficit had been " dramatically reduced. " Last year's actual deficit

was $412 billion, the largest ever, and under Bush's budget this year,

it will be $427 billion. The actual deficit, with war spending

included, would balloon to $1.4 trillion by 2010 under this plan.

 

In the second place, the budget contains none of the expenses for the

war in Iraq or Bush's plan for Social Security, presumably in place by

then.

 

Third, the values reflected in this budget are deformed.

 

The cuts take away from schools in need, child-care assistance,

environmental programs (a whopping 10.4 percent cut there), students

(he lied about Pell Grants), veterans, Medicaid, food stamps --

basically the weakest and the poorest Americans. The money goes

overwhelmingly to the richest Americans, who would get the permanent

tax cuts, and to the Department of Defense, the monster.

 

According to this budget, Defense gets a 4.8 percent increase, bad

enough (again, this is without counting Iraq). But as William Saleton

explains in an article on Slate.com, what Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

has done is to hide at least $40 billion in normal defense

expenditures in the supplementary appropriation that will have to be

passed for the war in Iraq.

 

When if he asked if he was hiding regular spending in the emergency

wartime bill, Rumsfeld said: " That would be wrong, and we wouldn't do

that. It's all right out in the open. " Whereupon the press laughed

merrily. Saleton estimates it's a 10 percent increase, without Iraq.

Others put it even higher. Ha, ha, ha.

 

Hubert Humphrey said, " The moral test of government is how that

government treats those who are in the dawn of life, the children;

those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are

in the shadows of life -- the sick, the needy, the handicapped. " Bush

seems to think they're all targets.

 

I'm a great believer in put up or shut up, so here's where I'd get the

money to pay for those programs. Don't make the tax cuts permanent --

they do go disproportionately to the very richest people in this

country, it's gross. And stop the two new tax cuts that go only to the

very, very rich. Don't put another nickel, not to mention another $9.7

billion, into that ridiculous boondoggle, Star Wars. Track down the

$8.8 billion the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction now says is

effectively unaccounted for because of " severe inefficiencies and poor

management. " The scathing report also says lack of oversight opened

the funds to corruption.

 

Oh, and if Congress would like to retain the power of the purse, I

suggest it look very closely at the fine print in this doozy. It

proposes biennial budgeting and appropriations (of course, not in

election years), automatic appropriations, a presidential veto on the

joint budget resolution (Congress' planning document for

appropriations) and much, much more.

http://www.creators.com/opinion_show.cfm?columnsName=miv

 

 

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