|
|
|
Bush Wages Domestic War of Mass DeceptionSocial Programs GuttedAs the U.S. war built on lies rages against Iraq, a war of mass deception is being waged daily at home. The Bush administration boasts the strength of its domestic social and economic policies as loudly as it trumpets its self-proclaimed successes in Iraq and against terrorism. The reality of these claims are equally false. Bush has increased military spending by $200 billion and given tax giveaways to the rich and the corporations worth two trillion dollars over the next decade. To compensate he is making deep social spending cuts in his new budget; and most of the cuts come on the backs of women, children, minorities and working families. Bush seeks to eliminate 65 programs including grants for low-income schools and family literacy; Community Development Block Grants; Rural Housing and Economic Development; and Arts in Education grants. Programs in which cuts have already been proposed over the next five years include Title I education funding, housing vouchers for low-income families; Head Start and WIC; and veteran's health benefits. The proposed cuts will be much worse because this budget would institute binding limits that would lock cuts in place. If Congress approves the capped levels, then across-the-board cuts to domestic discretionary programs will be automatic. Under Bush's proposal, state and local budgets will suffer a $6 billion shortfall causing even more cuts into the social and educational budgets. Meanwhile the record budget deficits will continue to skyrocket. With these skewed priorities, Americans already seeing their quality of life deteriorating have much to be concerned about. And a deceptive Medicare prescription drug funding, which benefits pharmacuetical companies and HMOs rather than seniors, will cost an estimated $4.9 trillion by 2014. Bush's proposed $2.4 trillion federal budget for fiscal year 2005 is a very dangerous weapon of mass destruction--and mass deception--aimed squarely at most of us. Besides deep cuts in critical domestic programs, it virtually freezes funding for all other domestic discretionary programs outside of homeland security. Bush's weapons of mass deception have misled a nation to war, and his unsound and unsafe domestic budgetary priorities have made us more vulnerable to an ever-decreasing standard of living. Cities for Peace and people around the country are devising solutions to these problems in a people's platform. (See www.citiesforpeace.org.) In Boston City Councilman Chuck Turner and other activists have started a "Fund the Dream" campaign (in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) that calls for major cuts in the military, an end to the tax cuts for the wealthy and a major effort to fight poverty and racism. United for Peace and Justice has adopted it as part of its national organizing efforts this summer. Karen Dolan is the director of the Cities for Peace project at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C. |
|
|
War Times/Tiempo de Guerras is a fiscally sponsored project of the |
