"On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions."
An editorial in the New York Times outlines the seriously warped priorities of the Bush administration's new budget. For example, as the author states, part of the budget is to cut discretionary spending by 16% over the next 5 years, which will save the country $66 billion per year, or one-sixth of the budget defecit. If, on the other hand, it rolled back the tax benefits for the wealthy, the government would see an additional $120 billion, which would reduce the defecit by one-third (families with an income of between $25,000 and $80,000 per year would pay about $156).
Other social programs are on the chopping block: the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children's health insurance, and federal aid of law enforcement1. Further cuts include making it harder for working families with children to recieve foodstamps (cutting about 300,000 people), as well as making it harder to get child care assistance (another 300,000).
Meanwhile, another part of the budget plan is to get rid of laws that limit tax deductions and exemptions for the upper-class (97% of the benefits would go to people making more than $200,000 a year), and give those making more than $1 million a year and average of $19,000 in savings.
It's clear the president knows which side his bread is buttered on. He's long been seen as beholden to the upper-class, and this does little to change that. One theory is that he's driving the budget into the gutter so he can justify cutting programs he doesn't like: this certainly seems to support that. He can cut social programs under the aegis of easing the budget defecit, meanwhile giving further aid to the people who need it the least. It also goes along with his belief in trickle-down economics, which doesn't have the greatest track record. Regradless, it's clear that this plan takes help from those who need it most and gives that money to those who need it least.
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1. For more information, see
Bush's War on Cops (Washington Monthly, 2003).
