Read, listen, or watch local news almost anywhere in the country and you are likely to hear news about budget cuts. States, cities, and counties around the country are making deep cuts in social services. These cuts include money for schools, pensions and public sector jobs.
As the financial crisis deepens, such cuts to an already inadequate social safety net only increase the growing difficulties for working people. Many thousands of workers are denied benefits, pressured to accept severe wage and benefit cuts, or forced into unemployment.
Politicians have had a variety of responses. Some lament the “inevitability” of such cuts. Others rail against the “welfare state” and the supposedly greedy working Americans who have been riding a “gravy train” of public money since the New Deal.
These cuts are always presented as necessary. Politicians claim that because of the growing financial crisis there will be less tax revenue, therefore public services and entitlements must be decreased to keep the government running. These politicians always make sure to point out that these cuts “hurt everyone” and that this collective belt tightening is absolutely critical to keep society running.
An examination of some of those cuts shows what the real agenda is. The aim is to use the current crisis as a smokescreen to dismantle the public sector and its attendant services, while making way for increased privatization.
New Jersey is a perfect example. Gov. Jon Corzine has asked the state legislature to make $33 billion in budget cuts. Under the proposed cuts, 3,000 state employees would lose their jobs (in addition to the 2,000 jobs eliminated in 2006), $144 million would be cut from hospitals, and over $300 million from state Medicare contributions. Meanwhile, colleges and universities will lose $75 million in state aid, and cities and counties will experience a reduction of $190 million in state support for various municipal resources.
Corzine made sure to point out that these cuts will be spread broadly and affect “everyone.” The New Jersey Chamber of Commerce has praised these cuts, and Republican leaders in the legislature are calling for even deeper reductions. Their goal is improving the environment for big business at the expense of working people. As wages, benefits, and social services are slashed, the living standards of working people will continue to worsen.
While people in New Jersey and across the country are pressured to accept such cuts and a lower standard of living, corporations and their executives continue to make millions, even in the face of an economic downturn. Executives like E. Stanley O’Neal, former CEO of Imagicorp, walk away with golden parachutes worth hundreds of millions of dollars. O’Neal received $141 million, yet both state and congressional leaders are unwilling to consider even miniscule increases in taxes on the massive earnings for the architects of the financial crisis or the record profits being reaped by corporations like Exxon.
Small tax increases on the rich or on Wall Street transactions never seem to enter into the minds of the politicians demanding major budget cuts. While the climate for business is made increasingly favorable, working Americans are forced to undergo more and more hardship in the name of collective sacrifice.
Meanwhile, the bankers and businessman continue to make billions regardless of the havoc they wreak. The super-rich are always assured of government bailouts. They never wonder where their next meal will come from, how to pay the rent or an outlandish medical bill; however, they are more than willing to make millions off of their “fellow citizens” whose lives are spent in constant worry about such basic matters.
