Bush Ate the Surplus
Have you ever seen one of those gross gorging contests in which contestants shove down 50-and-a-half hot dogs in 12 minutes or snarf up a tub of Spam without using their hands? Barf city.
These professional gorgers are what I think of when I see George W. gobbling our tax dollars with his latest budget. What a tax hog! This is the guy who ran on reducing the size and spending level of government, yet — Hello! — he has taken the $5.6 trillion surplus we had when he came into office and — hocus-pocus — turned it into a $2.1 trillion deficit. In just two years!
Plus, Bush’s new budget spends all our Social Security surplus and all our Medicare surplus. Don’t tell him about that $600 you’ve got hidden under your mattress, or he’ll be by to grab that, too!
Just the interest that we’ll have to pay on George’s deficit spending will add $3 trillion to our nation’s debt over the next 10 years. This is a massive wealth-redistribution program from us middle-class taxpayers to a few wealthy bondholders who will draw the biggest share of these trillions in interest. Imagine if we proposed making a $3 trillion shift from rich bondholders to the middle class! “Class war,” George would shriek, “Communism!” “Evildoers,” he’d call us.
Yet his income redistribution also takes money from our meager pockets and ships it to wealthy foreign interests. He doesn’t mention it, but nearly half of our government’s debt is now held by bondholders from abroad.
All of this debt for … what? To dole out more tax giveaways to the rich, fatten the already bloated Pentagon contractors, and give away more in corporate welfare. We do not get health care for all, do not get our rivers and lakes cleaned up, do not get energy independence, and do not get other things America really needs.
To help fight this raw deal and put American values back into the budget, call Campaign for America’s Future: 202/955-5665.
Make Congress Decide Bush’s Iraq Attack
It’s not often that I get to praise members of Congress, but there’s a hardy band of them that deserves to hear this message from us: Thank you!
I think that the founders of our great country would say the same thing. And whether you’re conservative, liberal, somewhere in between, or all over the place — I think these six members of the house have done us all a favor and deserve our thanks: John Conyers Jr., Jesse Jackson Jr., Dennis Kucinich, Sheila Jackson Lee, Jim McDermott, and José Serrano.
These lawmakers have gone to federal court in Boston to seek an injunction against George W.’s plans to attack Iraq. Whatever you think of the merits of going to war against Saddam Hussein, this lawsuit yanks Bush and the congressional leadership back to a basic constitutional principle: Presidents don’t declare war. … Congress does.
It’s right up front in Article 1, Section 8: “Congress shall have the Power … to declare War.” This was no small formality to Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Madison, and the rest, for the framers had dealt with European monarchs who could imperiously and single-handedly launch wars, so they wanted to put a constitutional check on presidents who might get imperial ideas.
Last year, Congress rushed through an Iraqi resolution that illegally ceded its power to Bush to decide to go to war. The lawmakers, backed by some soldiers and soldiers’ parents, seek an injunction against this resolution, saying that it is unconstitutional for Congress to relinquish its authority — and responsibility — on such a life-and-death matter.
If Bush thinks Saddam is worth the blood and lives of our youth, at least he and Congress should not bypass the Constitution to send them, and at least they should respect our soldiers and our democracy enough to have a full, open, and thoughtful congressional debate about the merits of declaring war.
To learn more, call Military Families for Peace at 617/522-9323.
The Hightower Report
This article appears in February 28 • 2003.