5 Things to Understand about the Budget Debate

This will be a quickie – I’m trying to get a book chapter written before leaving for spring break, but you faithful readers need something to tide you over. This will be it until mid-March.

As you follow the debate about the budget – federal, but the states are involved, too – just remember these five things:

1. It’s not about the deficit! Obama’s budget proposal has a deficit of over one trillion dollars. Let’s write it out, $1,000,000,000,000 – wow! Huge! No wonder the House Republicans are upset! So they are fighting hard for $60 billion in cuts, which would leave a deficit of only about one trillion dollars. Hmm . . .

2. It’s not about the deficit! Those most rabid about budget cutting now voted enthusiastically in December for a tax cut package of over $900 billion. (Well, not quite — the most rabid are GOP freshmen, who didn’t get to vote in December because they were not in office yet. Still, the Republican leadership was there, and voted for the tax cuts.) That $900 billion is spread over several years, so defeating the tax cut would not have wiped out the trillion-dollar deficit, but it would have mad a nice dent in it.

3. It’s not about the deficit! We’re fighting wars in Afghanistan (where helicopters just killed 9 boys gathering firewood) and (though our government pretends it’s over) in Iraq. As recent protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen, Libya, Oman, Iran, Morocco, Algeria, Iraq (yes, now that we’ve installed “democracy” there, pro-democracy protests have sprung up, and our “democratic” government is killing them!), and elsewhere have shown, foreign invasion is not the way to democratize a country. I hope they don’t do it in Libya. In any case, really ending these wars is absolutely necessary if we want to get rid of the deficit – yet very few of the deficit hawks are proposing that.

4. It’s not about the deficit! Social security does not contribute to the deficit, yet the majority of the deficit commission wants to cut it, and the Republicans are taking up the cry. (However, keep in mind that the deficit commission never agreed on a report, since there were not enough votes to approve one – so Boehner’s criticism that Obama didn’t follow his own deficit commission is bogus.) Social security does need some adjustment to keep it strong past the middle of the century (how about making the rich pay the tax on their whole income?), but it’s a separate fund. Unless the government diverts social security taxes to pay for other things, cutting social security benefits won’t do anything for the deficit.

5. It’s not about the deficit! Health care costs do contribute to the deficit, yet the deficit-conscious House of Representatives just voted to repeal the national health care law. The law has many flaws, and does not do nearly enough to control health care costs – but it does make a step, and repealing it would increase the deficit.

Conclusion: It’s not about the deficit! The budget cuts the Republicans in Congress are proposing are all based on undermining the ability of government to increase the quality of life for everybody. They will make it harder for anyone but the rich to get an education, eliminate jobs for working people, and make it almost impossible for regulatory agencies to enforce protective laws that are on the books. This is not deficit reduction, it’s class war, another attempt by the upper class to assure that the their profits, dividends, and bonuses are paid for by the rest of us. In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker, backed by Republican majorities in the state legislature, is holding the state hostage until his budget bill passes, even though the unions he is trying to destroy have already agreed to all the economic concessions he proposed. The only issue at stake there is the destruction of the unions, part of the destruction of the power of the working class to defend itself. That’s what’s the federal budget battle is about, as well. We should forget about the deficit and pass a budget that creates jobs, lowers the cost of education, protects the environment, and moves us toward a better health care system.