Bush's War On The Poor

The Nation: Cuts At Home Fund War On Terror

(The Nation)  This column was written by Robert Scheer.

---

Where would the Bush Administration be without terrorism? Like the Cold War before it, the "war on terror" is a conveniently sweeping rationale for all manner of irrational governance, such as the outrageous $2.77 trillion budget the President proposed to Congress on Monday.

Without terrorism, how could Bush justify to fiscal conservatives the whopping budget deficits that he has ballooned via his tax cuts for the wealthy that he now seeks to make permanent? Without terrorism, how could he convince government corruption watchdogs that the huge increases in military and homeland security – seven percent and eight percent, respectively – aren't simply payback to the defense contractors who so heavily support the Republicans every election cycle? Without terrorism, how could the President get away with blindly dumping another $120 billion into the war in Afghanistan and the bungled occupation of Iraq that the Bush Administration had once promised would be financed by Iraqi oil sales?

In order to pay for the money pit that is Iraq, the Bush budget demands draconian cuts in 141 domestic programs, led by a $36 billion cut in Medicare spending for the elderly over the next five years. This from a president re-elected after promising to expand rather than curtail health-care services to seniors.

Many of the other proposed cuts are equally obscene, such as the termination of $1 billion in child-care funds over five years, and the complete elimination of the Commodity Supplemental Food Program that provides food assistance to low-income seniors, needy pregnant women and children.

These attacks on the social safety net for the most vulnerable members of our society are not only patently unfair, in light of Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, but the simultaneous blank check for the Pentagon cannot be honestly justified by the fight against terrorism. And although the President insists that it is unpatriotic to question his strategies in fighting terrorism, let me risk his opprobrium, and that of the pseudo-conservative bully boys that shill for him in the media, by doing just that.