The writer is a host on Pacifica radio’s KPFK, 90.7 FM.
President Bush revealed his 2008 fiscal budget proposal on Feb. 5 that seeks to increase military funding while significantly cutting back on social programs.
He described the $2.9 trillion dollar wartime budget as necessary to adequately fund the so-called fight against
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But there was little discussion, as well as little money, for what economists describe as discretionary spending—money allocated for non-defense programs not mandated by law.
Bush’s idea of empowering “average Americans,” as he mentioned in his talk, included a continuation of tax cuts at a cost of $ $3.0 trillion dollars over 10 years. These tax cuts will not benefit workers. They are a financial gain for medium and large sized business and wealthy individuals with lots of tax write-offs.
Most cuts in the proposal will harm programs for the poor and the elderly. Over the next five years, the Bush administration wants to see $66 billion dollars in cuts to Medicare spending and $26 billion in cuts to Medicaid.
In response, Families USA, a corporate-funded healthcare advocate, said the administration was trying to push people in the United States away from the existing system toward a privatized system in which individuals bear more of the burden. The group said, “Americans are overusing healthcare services, the administration believes, and the only way to bring costs under control is to make sure healthcare consumers have ‘skin in the game.’”
In other words, consumers should feel the sting of healthcare costs so they are encouraged to shop for cheaper care and avoid “unnecessary” services and procedures—like checkups.
The ‘warfare’ state
The Pentagon budget alone is proposed at $481 billion—an 11 percent increase over last year. This doesn’t include the $245 billion dollars already set aside for the military occupation of the Middle East.
As the president announced the addition of 21,500 troops to combat duty last month, the White House requested Congress pass emergency funding of $100 billion, in addition to the $70 billion already approved for the Iraq occupation this year.
The entire budget proposal will likely pass through Congress with little opposition. Even though Democrats claim to be anti-war, the leadership has pledged publicly to support continued war funding and assistance for the current number of troops occupying Iraq.
As military spending increases, the war hawks in Washington continue their attack on workers by cutting and eliminating federally funded social programs. The 2008 budget proposes to cut billions of dollars in education, health care, social security—in all, it proposes to take out 141 federal programs totaling $12 billion.
Of course, the hidden cost of a wartime budget carries its own casualties. Eliminating social programs will have a devastating effect on the people who depend on them.
But the $12 billion program cut savings is small change in the pockets of the millionaires and billionaires—the bankers, defense contractors, corporate officers, and oil barons—who will benefit from the U.S. imperialists’ inflated military spending.
The Bush administration continues to promote his proposal as a way to balance the budget while “protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism, keeping the economy strong with low taxes and keeping spending under control while making federal programs more effective.”
But working-class people active in the anti-war mobilization can see past this bloated rhetoric.
The budget proposal is simply a way of promoting the interests of the wealthy as they wage attacks against working-class and oppressed peoples, not only in the United States, but around the world as well.
Attack on workers
The 2008 budget shows us that when the wealthy, powerful war hawks create conflicts, the connection between the war abroad and the war at home becomes clearer.
The occupation of Iraq is a class war against the Iraqi people. It is also a class war against workers in the United States.
The class component of the budget is readily apparent upon examining where the cuts will be made. Education, health care, food stamps and other programs all risk massive cuts in funding, mostly to working-class communities of color.
In education, the administration proposed deep cuts in federal subsidies for student loans. Bush has suggested eliminating two loan programs: the Perkins Loan and the Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant, which are federal programs that provide low-interest loans for middle- and low-income families.
The social gains won through workers’ struggle in the 1930s and beyond are in danger—the welfare safety net and social security.
But the Bush administration wasn’t the first to attack these programs. It started in the late-1970s under the Carter administration, when the U.S. ruling class was recovering from its defeat in Vietnam. It continued full force throughout the 1980s under Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and then through the 1990s under Clinton.
Clinton’s welfare reform bill in 1996 threw tens of thousands of low-income people off the welfare rolls, taking away much-needed federal assistance.
Unite workers against the capitalists
The wealthy in all capitalist countries consider any minor infringement on their profits or limitation on capital expansion to be a crime.
In the United States, the ruling class jumps on any opportunity to overthrow any foreign government that seeks independence, to crush worker movements that grow in strength, and to eliminate the entirety of social programs and services that exist for workers.
Even though the Democrats expressed some shock and outrage at the projected military spending and the drastic cutback in social programs for 2008, they are not willing to jeopardize their position as the other capitalist ruling party. They are an integral part of the capitalist system of profit and greed.
What workers in the United States need more than ever is a movement that unites all people to fight against the barbarism of the capitalist system of exploitation and domination.
History has shown that as living conditions deteriorate—as unemployment and layoffs rise, as access to health care and housing becomes more limited, as poverty increases—more and more people begin to struggle against those intolerable conditions.
These conditions form the basis for a mass movement with the power to turn back the Bush administration’s attacks on workers at home and abroad.
