Monday, October 31, 2005

Is this the 80s?

It's certainly sounding a LOT like the 80s. For those who don't remember, that was a time when certain politicians participated in a class war against the poor and the middle class while funneling money to the most wealthy of the country (trickle down economics). They even had the chutzpah to label those who disagreed with their policies as socialists participating in class warfare. Well, some of us were...

Facing a huge deficit and a looming deadline to concoct a budget agreeable to both chambers of Congress, lawmakers recently made a number of decisions that would adversely affect the poorest and least-influential people in the United States. In the name of cost cutting, several Senate and House committees agreed to or proposed to slash huge amounts of money from several key anti-poverty programs, including Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps last week.

The proposals arise from Congress’s need to reconcile competing Senate and House appropriations packages. The final package is expected within the next few weeks. Both houses are also considering steep tax cuts and possibly expanding a number of exemptions that would directly benefit the nation’s wealthiest.

Studies went on to prove that trickle down economics really didn't work. Bush the first even tried to stem the tide of some of the more Draconian effects of the theory by working with Congressional Democrats to balance the budget. Of course, in order to do so he had to break his "No new taxes" pledge and was promptly punished for that by corporate America (a redundant phrase if ever there was one). In the report above we see 2 staples of trickle down economics: a) tax cuts to the wealthy instead of tax increases to balance the budget (why shouldn't the wealthy be more than happy to contribute more during war time?) and b) no mention of reducing Pentagon expenditures which outnumber most of the other countries in the world combined. For a pro-life party, Republicans sure love to promote weapons of mass destruction and death.

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