THINKING FOR OURSELVES

Budget Priorities

By Shea Howell

Michigan Citizen, Feb. 10-16, 2008

In the disconnected way that the news is catalogued, the recent $3.1 trillion budget presented by George Bush seems separated from the current election, the war in Iraq and the concerns of most Americans. Most news reports tell us not to pay too much attention to the whole thing because the Democrats are not likely to pass it anyway.

However, budgets are more than simple numbers. They reflect the stark priorities of the nation. This budget proposal demonstrates the horrific direction in which Bush and his like have taken our country.

First, it places the future in the hands of a growing military complex.

The only areas of budget growth are the Pentagon and national security.

Bush proposes $515.4 billion for the Defense Department. When adjusted for inflation. this means annual military spending will reach its highest levels since WWII.

Second, the budget enshrines tax cuts costing $4 trillion over ten years, thus making it clear that the wealthiest among us have the least responsibility for the common good.

Third, the proposals cut the growth of Medicare and Medicaid by reducing payments to hospitals and doctors. At a time when nearly 50 million Americans are without health care, and millions more face the loss of protections as their jobs and benefits disappear, such slashing has profound repercussions.

Finally, spending on domestic priorities is at an all- time low. Robert Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities, said, “’Discretionary’ domestic spending — which is everything outside national security and entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — is falling to historic lows as a proportion of the overall economy, roughly 3 percent or less.”

This small area of the proposed budget, about one-sixth of the total, is scheduled to take the hardest hit. Programs like assistance for home heating oil, aid to schools, support for housing, college scholarships and innovations in technologies and alternative energies, are all slashed or eliminated outright.

In essence, the future outlined in this budget is one of an increasing militarized nation where the majority of the people struggle with the basic necessities of life, heating their homes if they can keep them, educating their children, and providing basic health care. Meanwhile, the wealthy few are given greater government protection of their wealth, which becomes increasingly attached to the welfare of the military, not the people.

This kind of budget reflects in stark terms a government that has turned away from providing for the life of its people to one that procures resources for the wealthy through increasing dependence on military power.

Our task is not only to reject such a budget, but also to do the kind of serious thinking about the priorities we have come to accept as ordinary.

While the Democratic candidates for president recognize the growing economic concerns of most Americans, there is little new thinking coming from them.

Quite simply the wealth of the nation is being squandered in the pursuit of an ever-larger death machine. The country is crumbling under the crushing weight of a war without end.

To turn this around, we need a profound change in how we think about our common responsibilities and obligations to one another, to the land that supports us, and to future generations.

More than half a century ago political leaders recognized that government can play a key role in restoring vitality to the country. Through vast public works programs, roads, parks, railways and civic centers were built. At the same time the hearts and spirits of people were fed by imaginative support for public art and culture. Such thinking is critical now to give meaning to the phrase, “Yes, we can.”

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