DETROIT -- It's time for the bold to act, to seize the initiative and set our nation on the course of fiscal sanity. First, we should sell Alaska and Texas.
Let's face it. It's time to downsize America. Big corporations are doing it all the time. It's the American way.
You have to think and act courageously and creatively. Forget the critics. Don't take it personally. Survival and the bottom line are all that matter. The operations you acquired during times of expansion and the quest to be big for big's sake will have to go. Lean and mean will save the day.
Our nation cannot afford our lifestyle. We're spending far more than we're taking in and the trend lines are even worse. As New York Times columnist and ace economist Paul Krugman reminds us, "We have a 21 percent GDP federal government and a 17 percent GDP revenue base."
We're told we simply cannot tax any more. In fact, we must cut taxes further. Foreign creditors, especially the Chinese, are financing our debt, but we can't count on them forever. It's crunch time in America. Divest or fail.
As the corporate model shows us, downsizing is not simply a matter of unloading unproductive assets and grabbing some quick cash. It's a wonderful opportunity to assess where you are and decide where you'd like to be. It's all about strategic planning and how to harness resources for the future. It's nothing personal. Texas and Alaska simply don't fit into our long-term national interests. The republic is better off without these big costly additions.
Alan Greenspan, who makes Rip Van Winkle seem like an insomniac, is finally awakening from his long slumber of irresponsibility and warning the nation that the Bushevik deficits do matter and the Republican spend-and-borrow binges cannot be sustained.
The departing chairman of the Federal Reserve uttered the unspeakable, telling the drunken sailors and AWOL Reservists in the White House and Congress, "We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing." Heresy!
President George Bush created this horrible mess with undeclared class warfare. He and the radical Republicans decided to dramatically cut taxes -- largely benefiting the wealthiest Americans -- and cover the massive drain on the U.S. Treasury with massive borrowing. Middle-class workers will pay most of the tab for the fiscal recklessness, while those who got the biggest tax cuts will escape the debt obligation.
The $6 billion-a-month war in Iraq and the $300 billion bill for Hurricane Katrina underline our fiscal peril. Add to that the unfunded new entitlement -- the prescription drug benefit for older Americans. The Busheviks deliberately lied about the cost of that plan to get it through Congress before last year's presidential election.
Bush and his boys in Congress have dramatically increased discretionary federal spending, and this wildly spending president has never vetoed an appropriation bill, although he's threatening to nix the Senate defense spending measure containing that onerous "no torture" for war prisoners amendment.
The pigs on Capitol Hill are wallowing in pork. The unconscionable transportation bill includes Appropriations Committee Chairman and Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens' infamous $450 million bridge to nowhere.
If the Senate Democrats had any guts -- they don't, by the way -- they would have blocked the entire transportation-spending measure unless Stevens yielded on his monumentally wasteful project. They should have been willing to halt road-spending projects in their own states until Stevens agreed to dump his pork bridge. I keep dreaming that just one Democratic senator might experiment with creative courage and stand up to Stevens, a textbook bully and mean-spirited bastard. No one will, because they are all afraid he'll use his powerful committee to nix their own pet projects.
The radical Republicans are now trying to recast themselves as fiscally responsible by making the poor and the weak pay for the excesses of the rich and powerful. In the House, they want to slash $50 billion from food and medical programs for the poor, Medicare benefits for older Americans and student loan programs. How enlightened.
At the same time, the Republicans are pushing for additional tax cuts, totaling $70 billion over five years, including an extension of Bush's 2003 reduction on stock dividends and capital gains.
Last week, Bush signed a $100 billion farm bill that provides even more corporate welfare for the agro-industry, subsidizes inefficiency and sticks shoppers with higher grocery bills. Find us one brave member of Congress, especially a Democrat, who is willing to call for an end to this madness.
Military spending is out of control. The Pentagon is throwing money everywhere and pretending we are safer as a result. We are not. Halliburton and other big military contractors are just making more money feeding at the public trough for our perceived safety and their sure profit.
Bush's military buildup plans predated the Sept. 11 attacks. But he certainly seized the moment to make sure his rich friends got even richer. Between 2001 and 2004, defense and homeland security spending soared from $333 billion to $492 billion.
Military contractors got the bulk of the big bucks, seeing their cut of federal spending grow from $135 billion to $203 billion over the same period of time. Texas just happens to be the state that has had the largest increase, up from $9 billion to $21 billion. Pure coincidence, I'm sure.
"We are spending as much on defense as the rest of the world combined," John Pike, a defense analyst, told the Scripps Howard News Service. "In the pre-Sept. 11 environment, defense numbers like these would have been eye-popping. But today, since there's no organized anti-militarism lobby and no effective peace movement, nobody's amazed by spending like this."
From entitlements to farm subsidies to pork projects and military waste, this administration has shown no willingness to exercise restraint and control spending. Bush and his reckless Republicans are committed to giveaways to corporate interests and significantly shifting more of the national tax burden from those who derive investment income from capital to the working stiffs who toil every day and have their taxes deducted upfront from their payroll checks.
Polls show the unending horrors of the war and the lies that got us there drive Americans' wrath toward the worst president in our history and result in his record low approval numbers. But when people finally wake up and understand how the Busheviks looted the Treasury to give to the rich, sock the poor and stick the middle class with the mess, they are really going to be even more angry.
The Democrats should resist any additional tax cuts and the extension of existing reductions. They should propose their own plan to hold spending down, beginning with delaying the implementation of the prescription drug program for the elderly.
Democrats should also press the White House to budget for the Iraq war and refuse to vote for any more supplemental appropriations to fund the war. We simply cannot afford the guns and butter, war and waste and tax raids for the rich, all at the same time. We are quickly approaching a critical mass of fiscal irresponsibility. Growing debt, higher interest rates and inflation are massing to create a perfect storm of fiscal catastrophe. Something has got to give. It's time to downsize America.
Unload Alaska and Texas. Not just for their obvious geographical bigness, but the inordinate big sucking sound these states make on the Treasury.
Alaska is an easy call. Per capita federal spending on the citizens of Alaska, $12,244, is the highest for any state. New Yorkers receive $7,186, and folks in Michigan get crumbs, a mere $5,741 a head. Sell it back to the Russians.
Before we sell Alaska, we could cede the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to Canada's Yukon Territory. Native people there would be more likely to preserve it and prevent oil exploration. That move would leave Ted Stevens frothing at the mouth like the rabid dog he is.
Texas, of course, reverts back to Mexico, but we shouldn't expect any cash. After all, Texas was seized from Mexico in an act of imperial aggression.
Yes, we would lose some treasures. Molly Ivins, Jim Hightower, Willie Nelson and Dennis Quaid come quickly to mind. We'd miss Austin and San Antonio, but we'd unload Houston and Dallas.
Most of all, though, we would be rid of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and the $6 billion-a-month war they brought us. Now that's a deal we can't refuse.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | Nov. 15 2005 |