DETROIT -- The Republican House of Representatives has helped create the largest deficit ever, spent shamelessly on pork-barrel projects and corporate welfare, passed the Tom DeLay criminal protection rule, thwarted the 9/11 Commission's recommendations on intelligence reform, approved a measure permitting the Appropriations Committee's top leadership and their staffs' access to any American's tax return, given lobbyists unprecedented access and key roles in crafting legislation and stuck it to 90,000 needy college students.
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The lame-duck 108th Congress is awful, and with bigger majorities in each House, peppered with new and even wackier hypocrites from the religious right, the 109th will be worse and the tyranny of the majority will be felt in many ways.
The Congress is an equal partner in George W. Bush's reckless borrow-and-spend fiscal policies and their radical record -- squandering the Treasury mostly to benefit the wealthy and then passing off the unconscionable debt that results to middle-class working people -- will only get worse.
The Bush deficit for 2004 was $413 billion -- a record in dollar amount -- but as a percent of gross domestic product (3.6 percent), it's less than the records Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder racked up. So the White House, their co-conspirators in Congress and pseudo-conservative pundits say, "Don't worry. When the economy really gets humming again and we privatize Social Security, and go to a national sales tax or a flat tax ... poof, no more deficits."
But unlike the president, a messianic Calvinist who "prays over" these issues, I find myself drawn to the facts and the sobering empirical data crunched with simple arithmetic. That would separate me from George W. Bush, a Harvard MBA, and his fiscal policy advisers who find fundamental addition and subtraction a threat to their faith-based "economic security plan."
In a revealing piece in the Oct. 17 "New York Times Magazine," Ron Suskind spoke to a White House aide who dismissed critics of the administration who belong to "what we call the reality-based community." As a card-carrying member of that group, along with tens of millions of other Americans who still know how to count, I find the Bushites' permanent trip into fiscal Fantasyland frightening.
The reality is, this marks the first time since World War II that the deficit grew for four straight years, and there is no end in sight. This also marks the first time since before the Great Depression that the deficit has continued to increase this far into a recovery.
Ronald Reagan and Bush the Elder raised taxes to stop the hemorrhaging of red ink in their administrations, something George W. Bush will never do. For him, it is an article of fundamental political faith that no tax can be raised and more taxes should be cut, regardless of the implications for the nation's fiscal health.
Stunning revenue declines are good for us. Since the president and Jerry Falwell have prayed over this, I guess we should stop worrying about higher interest rates, the declining dollar and a generation saddled with paralyzing debt. It's all God's will.
Treasury Secretary John Snow recently spoke at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs and noted, apparently without blushing, that he was a "life-long deficit hawk" and that the president has submitted a "strict budget" to Congress, even though it did not include tens of billions for the imperial war in Iraq and rebuilding of our new colony.
Snow and his allies in Congress must have been thinking about that "strict budget" when they pounced on the idea of making a sweeping reduction in federal aid for college students.
The Pell Grant is the largest federal student-aid program, providing qualified students with assistance of between $400 and $4,000 a year. The program has helped millions of needy students get through college, and with job losses and a decline in median family incomes, more and more students are looking to the grants to get a chance for higher education.
But on Saturday, Nov. 20, while most of the nation was riveted to the video of the wild melee at the Detroit Pistons-Indiana Pacers game from the night before, a different kind of outrageous behavior, with far more serious implications, was being pounded out in Congress. With the urging of the White House, this privileged club, dominated by wealthy white men, decided to stick it to needy students by making them ineligible for Pell Grants.
The Department of Education had been pressing to change the formula for the Expected Family Contribution (EFC). The formula considers a family's income and assets in determining eligibility. The higher the EFC, the lower the Pell Grant award. By changing the allowances for state and local taxes, Bush's operatives figured they could save $300 million next year by whacking 90,000 young people off the eligibility requirements for Pell Grants altogether, and reducing aid for a million others. Most of these kids come from families making less than $40,000 a year.
Last year, Sen. Jon Corzine (D-N.J.) sponsored an amendment that blocked the Department of Education from implementing the new rule. But this year, with their great "mandate," Bush and his Christian cronies in Congress figured the time was ripe to screw the weak and spare the rich.
While cutting off the student aid to save money, the administration and Congress just shrugged when informed Defense Department auditors are unable to locate more than a third of the government property Halliburton was paid to control and manage for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. Hundreds of items worth tens of millions are nowhere to be found. The Pentagon's Inspector General Stuart W. Brown said, with marvelous understatement, that Halliburton "did not effectively manage government property." No kidding.
The cumulative abuses -- overbilling, no-bid contracts, cost-plus contracts gone wild, and the shameful war-profiteering -- make Vice President Cheney's old company the symbol of wretched greed. We probably don't even know the half of it. Congressional oversight under the watch of radical Republicans is nonexistent.
Being a faithful steward of the peoples' money and advocating fiscal sanity are not traits often linked to liberals, but in the Age of Bush, that's where you'll find people clinging to these proven virtues.
So many labels are misleading or meaningless. The "liberal media" is one of my favorites. It's especially ridiculous in a time when right-wing talk radio, the Fox News Channel and the Caspar Milquetoasts of the media elite have done such a patriotic job propagating the Bush administration's lies and keeping the American public so poorly informed.
One of the greatest myths of our day is that most liberals consider Dan Rather an icon and trusted champion of the truth. I, for one, celebrate the announced departure of Rather as the anchor of the CBS "Evening News." He's been a lightning-rod for right-wing wrath and his personal quirkiness and occasional madness made him an easy target.
I never cared for Rather's anchoring. Several years ago, he'd sign off the newscast by solemnly intoning, "Courage." I started wondering if he was nuts. I am proud that I publicly called for his firing long before it became fashionable. It was in 1987, and I was the speaker at a General Motors Management Club dinner. As is my custom, I invited questions after my remarks. It was about a week after Rather had thrown a hissy fit and walked off the news set because a U.S. Open Tennis match ran long and the newscast had to be truncated. Frankly, even a dull tennis match would be more exciting than Rather.
A questioner asked what I thought of the incident and what I would have done. I said, with my usual subtleness, that Rather's behavior was despicable, selfish and highly unprofessional, and I would have fired him on the spot. It's always amazed me Rather could be so bad for so long, produce such horrible ratings and survive. I'm not into conspiracy theories, but, just maybe, fellow Texan Karl Rove manipulated CBS into keeping Rather around for so long.
Rather's role in "Memogate" -- Bush's fabricated National Guard records used in a "60 Minutes" report -- was inexcusable on a number of fronts. It's clear Rather was rushing to "break" the story. The fact is, you didn't need records to prove Bush got favorable treatment to get into the Guard and was coddled throughout his military service. There are plenty of eyewitness accounts about the duties Lt. Bush did or did not perform.
Bryan Curtis of "Slate" online magazine had a fine assessment: "They charge that Rather's careless muckraking betrays a liberal bias, but it's actually much worse than that. Rather isn't a liberal hack. He's bonkers."
Rather's phony folksiness and nauseating aphorisms made a generation of viewers wince in pain. When the bombing of Iraq began in March 2003, Rather actually said on the air, "And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air." I didn't know a human being was capable of such triteness.
One thing you can always say about old Dan, though, is he can top his own excesses. The latest example came when papers across the country showed the photograph of 20-year-old Marine James Blake Miller staring at the horizon with a cigarette dangling from his lips during the battle for Fallujah -- essentially a cheap rip-off of the Marlboro Man ads. War is hell and the best way to cope with the pressure is to light up a smoke. The tobacco industry's been selling that killer message for generations.
Rather used the picture on his newscast, gazing admiringly at Miller and telling his viewers, "For me, this one's personal. This is a warrior with his eyes on the far horizon, scanning for danger. See it. Study it. Absorb it. Think about it. Then take a deep breath of pride. And if your eyes don't dampen, you're a better man or woman than I." Well, Dan, I guess I am a better man.
Toodles! Courage!
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 30 2004 |