nt Bush announced recently a budget proposal requesting cuts to 150 domestic programs. This was supposedly done in order to try to reduce the massive budget deficit and debt that have been caused by a slower economy, record tax cuts and military spending.
Judging by the programs targetted by the tax cuts, President Bush seems to think that the cause of the budget crisis is an increase in spending on our nation's safety net for youth and those in economic hard times. For example, one third of the programs targeted for elimination are related to education. Housing programs will be cut by over 11% from the previous year. In addition, Medicaid recipients, farmers, the Environmental Protection Agency and programs to build schools on Indian reservations will all feel the pinch.
However, when one compares government spending as a proportion of GDP now to what it was when the US had a budget surplus, spending vs. GDP hasn't increased much. Indeed, the major cause of the deficit is the decline in government revenues due to tax cuts. Nonetheless, Bush's budget has no proposals for increasing government revenues, only for cutting spending. In fact, there is much discussion of making permanent tax cuts which were set to expire in the near future.
Neither is the rhetoric about "small government" a coherent reason for the president's budget. Although the social welfare net is being cut, subsidies for big business (or "corporate welfare") continue. Furthermore, the military budget is set to rise another 4.8% to almost 420 billion dollars (over a billion dollars a day). While some people might feel that such a high military budget is necessary in time of war, this budget does not include the cost of running military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
These wars are funded by subsequent requests for money from congress which will further increase military spending (and as the old saying goes, if you add $100 billion here and $80 billion there, "pretty soon you are talking real money"). Rather, this money includes such anachronistic and scientifically dubious projects as the space based missile defense shield which has been unable to prove effective in dummy trials despite 100 billion dollars spent on it since the Reagan presidency.
In addition the budget proposal does not include the cost of funding George Bush’s plan to radically overhaul the social security provision. Though Bush claims to be making social security more efficient, estimates suggest that the U.S. would have to borrow up to $4.5 trillion dollars over 20 years to enact the changes laid out by the president. I would argue that the ideology behind his proposed social security changes is the same motivation to axe as many social programs as possible. When taking into account the spending that was excluded from the Bush budget, the proposal will probably not even shrink the deficit significantly.
Strangely enough, the cuts to education, health, environmental budgets and the rise in military spending are being called “pro-growth policies” by President Bush. This is perhaps the most duplicitous characteristic of the plan. Nothing is more central to growth and development of the American people than health and education, and nothing is more destructive to world peace and prosperity than aggressive militarism.
Though the election was supposedly won because of “value issues” linked to the president’s “Christian morals,” it is becoming clear that issues like abortion and gay marriage were little more than symbolic. The issues about foreign policy and domestic spending that were obscured in many ways during the election are again becoming central to the Bush presidency.
In some ways, the transition from election politics to second term politics show a bait and switch tactic. A conservative base was fired up over divisive social issues that are now taking a back seat to policies that are more geopolitical, though no less ideological.
Since “Christian values” helped win Bush the election, the questions of the post-election period become “Who would Jesus Bomb?” and “How much money would Jesus steal from Peter and Paul to build the most technologically advanced military machine in history?”
These pro-growth policies are perhaps just one more example of the disingenous official language of the Bush Administration that George Orwell would have called “newspeak.” Indeed just with regard to the invasion of Iraq we have seen the administration maintain that "war is peace." With regards to WMD "Ignorance is strength," and in American occupied Iraq, torture or "slavery is freedom."
With the prevalence of war around the world, and violence and poverty at home, this is an intensely important moment for Americans to hold their leaders accountable not just for their words but for their actions. We as Americans must be concerned that, behind the rhetoric of individual ownership, domestic security, and liberation of foreigners from tyranny may lie the dream of a tightly-disciplined American empire, unconstrained by "quaint" notions of either fiscal solvency or human rights.
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