DETROIT -- "Keep the damn federal government off our backs and out of our lives!" That's been the battle cry of conservative Southern politicians for generations. The cry was usually code for their opposition to civil rights. In rural areas of the South, the federal government was despised for sending revenue agents to break up their beloved moonshine stills and forcing the locals to buy taxed booze.
They hate government, or so they claim, and that's certainly the public posture of President George W. Bush, a true son of the conservative South who has made a career of trying to expunge his WASP New England pedigree -- except, of course, for the inherited wealth and privilege it has provided him.
But the truth is that Bush and his Southern base adore government. They can't get enough of it. They want more government, under one important condition: They don't want to pay for it. Government spending is great for them, but send the bill somewhere else. Although delayed and poorly managed, billions of federal relief dollars are pouring in to help the hurricane-ravaged South. The federal government will pay the bulk of the bill for emergency assistance and for the infrastructure repairs, which will cost billions more. That's fine, but we should recognize that wage-earning, middle-class Americans will pay most of those bills. George W. Bush won't.
Last Thursday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Bush again trumpeted one of his favorite lies: There is such a thing as a free lunch. Hostess Diane Sawyer was gushing about her "exclusive" interview with the president in the early morning, noting how noble it was for him to cut two days off his five-week vacation in Texas to hustle back to the White House to personally supervise federal relief efforts. Sawyer, a former Nixon aide, was hyperventilating over her journalistic coup, heaping praise on Bush's determination to use every resource of the federal government and provide billions of dollars to those communities wiped out by Hurricane Katrina.
Then, doing her Breathless Mahoney imitation, Sawyer offered this dramatic assurance to the viewers: "When the interview ended, the president told me he wanted everyone to know that the hurricane aid will not mean any new taxes."
What total crap! The FCC should fine people for using the public airwaves to propagate such trash. Of course the taxpayers are footing the bill -- with interest. Reckless George will just tack the cost onto the national debt and pay that by taxing wage-earners. People in the investment class -- multimillionaires like Diane Sawyer -- won't feel the pinch, but inordinately taxed middle-class American workers will.
Bush, aided by shameless cheerleaders like Sawyer, keeps lying to the American people, telling them his tax cuts are benefiting working Americans. Bush's addiction to deficits is doing great harm to the nation. He simply refuses to recognize conspicuous failure. The addict is in denial.
The Associated Press reports that every American man, woman and child now owes $145,000 "to pay the tab for the long-term promises the U.S. government has made to creditors, retirees, veterans and the poor."
The federal deficit is out of control and Bush's unfunded Medicare prescription drug entitlement will make it worse. Unfunded disaster assistance will also. Every American wage-earner bears a $350,000 burden for Bush's deficit. They are the people who will pay for the hurricane damage. George W. Bush, as usual, will get a pass, along with his adoring Ms. Sawyer and her circle of friends.
Bill Clinton left office and bequeathed Bush a $236 billion budget surplus. Bush blew that in a flash with tax cuts benefiting those in the top 1 percent income bracket. Last year, Bush's fiscal fantasies produced a $412 billion deficit.
The Busheviks were in bliss recently, announcing the projected $331 billion deficit for 2005 is nearly $100 billion less than expected. Hallelujah! Bush's economic growth plan is finally working. And the deficits will soon disappear, the chorus of arithmetically challenged sang. But David Walker, the U.S. comptroller general, who audits the federal government's books, offers a sour but truthful note.
"There is no way we're going to grow our way out of our long-range fiscal imbalance," he told the AP.
Praying for good times to return won't erase the Bush deficit, either.
"I really do not believe the American people have a real idea as to where we are and where we're headed, and what the potential implications are for the country if we don't start making some tough decisions soon," Walker said.
Tough decisions and George W. Bush don't belong in the same sentence. Bad decisions, sure.
The Associated Press reports an increasing number of economists and conservative and liberal politicians who can actually count are "warning that America's non-stop borrowing has put the nation on the road to a major fiscal disaster -- one that could unleash plummeting home values, rocketing interest rates, lost jobs, stagnating wages, and threats to government services ranging from health care to law enforcement."
Disaster and George Bush always belong in the same sentence. And you can also toss in deception and delusion. Sure, we can spend billions for hurricane disaster aid, but it really won't cost the taxpayers a dime. Honest, that's what George W. Bush is telling us.
Remember Bush's little experiment in Iraq. "Advancing the cause of liberty in the Middle East" and bringing "security to our citizens" wasn't going to cost us, either, we were told. Iraq's oil revenue would cover the cost of the occupation and rebuilding the nation. Former deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz made that cheery claim. That failure, as usual, assured a promotion and Bush made Wolfie head of the World Bank.
Current operations in Iraq are costing wage-earning American taxpayers $5.6 billion a month. That's more than the monthly cost of military operations in Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.
The Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus prepared a report entitled "The Iraq Quagmire" detailing the cost of Bush's dirty war that now breaks down to $186 million a day. Since the Iraq war is being financed with deficit spending, economists say that could double the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years.
Even as the U.S. economy grows, in George Bush's America, income for working people is stagnant and the rate of poverty is rising. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that, for the first time on record, household incomes have failed to increase for five straight years. Gee, let me see, who's been president these past five years?
With their tax dollars and charitable giving, hardworking Americans will help people recover from the disaster of Hurricane Katrina. But our nation may never recover from the fiscal and foreign policy disasters George W. Bush has wrought.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Sept. 6 2005 |