Budgeting Class Warfare

There has been class warfare going on pretty openly for the past six years in the United States, and the Bushites have been leading it. Today the Senate narrowly passed their budget bill, though it's not the final word by any means for the official federal budget. Class warfare was again at work.

The only class that benefits from the Bushite budget is the ultra-rich and the Bushite corporate cronies. They tried and largely succeeded in putting their interests above the future, the country and certainly all other Americans, especially those most in need of the help of their more fortunate fellow Americans.

The Bushite strategy has been clear from the beginning: totally eradicate the Clinton surplus and run up huge deficits with tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy and billions to corporate pals in the war business---much of it unnecessary spending, much of it that never aided the war on terror or the war in Iraq and certainly not Katrina victims---and then cry that the government can't afford to pay out all that money to help the families made poor by corporate outsourcing, a health care system much more interested in profit and wealth for a few than in health for the many, or for older Americans whose pensions are being legally stolen and dismantled by greedy executives and bought politicians and judges.

So the cry went out in the Wall Street Journal editorial pages about "entitlement" spending going up, as if the greed of the poor, the sick and the old---and those colored people as well, be they black, brown, yellow or red--is getting way out of control.

It took Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Spector to replace some of the cuts the Bushites wanted, restoring some $7 billion. "Health and education are the two major capital assets of this country," he said, noting that (as the NY Times put it) those areas had been starved for money in recent years and could not afford to be overlooked again.

What is the Bushite Congress willing to spend money on? Not on actually enhancing American security against terrorism--as this list of defeated amendments proves. It goes to Bushites who are scamming for billions: for useless technologies like Star Wars and expensive Homeland Security gadgets in a massive corporate scam; the for-profit war in Iraq, enriching Halliburton, documented to have fed troops tainted food and water. And wasting millions if not billions on no-bid crony contracts supposedly to aid Katrina victims and rebuilding, which is apparently going as well as rebuilding Iraq.

And that's not even counting the tax cuts for the superrich. And let's remember one more time that social programs were funded during the Clinton years, and he left a huge budget surplus. So tell me again how the poor and the sick and the old are responsible for this deficit.