Hypocrisy on Stilts
These "emergency" supplementals are not part of the regular budget. They're a way to portray the deficit as smaller than it really is and protect local pork projects from scrutiny. It is also easier for the Pentagon to duck the hard choices between optional weapons programs and pressing current needs.
It is scandalous the way our politicians have compromised the nation's fiscal health. And it is morally outrageous that President Bush has succeeded in making matters worse by getting congressional support for extending capital gains and the dividend tax cut. These primarily benefit the well-to-do--at a time when middle- and lower-income families face soaring costs of housing, medical care, and gas prices, not to mention jobs with no health coverage or even access to unemployment insurance. So, do our elected officials try to increase the minimum wage? No. Do they try to cut taxes for the poor or provide more medical care? No. What do they do? They give even more tax benefits to the wealthiest.
It was one thing for President Bush to engage in aggressive tax-cutting in his first term, when the economy might have contracted severely in the wake of the dot-com bust and 9/11. Those cuts were defensible. But that emergency is long over. To have avoided a downturn with the idea of picking up the pieces later on works only if there is then some effort to pick up the pieces. Instead, what do we get? Permanent tax cuts.
For Republicans to define themselves as fiscal conservatives after five years of profligacy is hypocrisy on stilts. No matter how cynical you are, it is difficult to keep up with such irresponsibility. Americans are not fools. Just look at the polls!
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