Salon/Conason: Cynical Compassion

Behind closed doors, Bush and his Republican allies are devising a federal budget for 2006 that ignores those most in need in order to make their tax cuts permanent.

At a White House meeting in November 2002, President Bush asked his staff: "What are we doing on compassion?" The president got no response but silence, recalls former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, and he quickly dropped the subject.

Now we are learning the true and profoundly dismaying answer to that question.

What the Bush administration has been "doing on compassion" is to play merciful and bountiful at political photo opportunities while concocting plans for devastating budget cuts and irresponsible tax cuts. As Bush himself warned his advisors at the same meeting, he didn't want to "slam the door in the third quarter of 2004," meaning in the months before Election Day. But behind closed doors and on Capitol Hill, he and his Republican allies are fashioning policies that reserve whatever compassion they can afford for those least in need.

According to a report in Thursday's Washington Post, the White House budget office recently issued guidelines to federal agencies currently planning for the 2006 budget. Those guidelines require substantial spending cuts for almost all domestic programs aside from homeland security, although that supposed Republican priority will be cut as well. Spending on education, so often promoted by Bush as the hallmark of his domestic agenda, would nearly eliminate last year's $1.7 billion increase. The highly successful Women, Infants, and Children nutrition program would lose more than $100 million, leaving many poor families without assistance. Head Start, another successful program that provides early childhood education to deprived children, is slated to lose $177 million, or 2.5 percent of its total budget.

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Dismantling -- or decimating -- government is Bush's answer to the question that has been puzzling economists: How will the Republicans control their exploding deficits while legislating permanent tax cuts and continuing to fund war, defense and security increases, as well as nondiscretionary entitlements such as Social Security? The president's unshakeable commitment to enormous permanent tax cuts leaves "almost no room" for future domestic spending, according to analysts at the Economic Policy Institute. (The effects of the cutbacks required under various scenarios are depicted in these EPI graphs.)

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http://salon.com/opinion/conason/2004/05/28/budget/index.html

If we take control of the government again, we will have no choice but to raise taxes in order to fund social programs, and the Repugs will take every opportunity to label us as the "tax and spend" party. The only other alternatives are to ignore social need or *gasp* reduce the military. Long term, the running of deficits ensures the republicans another shot at control.