The Money Magnet
By BOB HERBERT - NEW YORK TIMES
Another column by a Liberal Pundit showing his frustration with the way things are going.
It's a great time to be George W. Bush.
The president will waltz into Manhattan today for another $2,000-a-plate fund-raiser, the latest stop on his fabulously successful dining-for-dollars tour. These are fun events at which the fat cats throw millions of dollars at the president to reinforce their already impenetrable ring of influence around the national government.
Mr. Bush is expected to pull in $5 million at this evening's sit-down, and may ultimately raise an astonishing quarter of a billion dollars for his re-election bid. During a brief stop Friday at a reception in Greensboro, Ga., where he picked up a quick $2.2 million, the president happily told his supporters, "You put the wind at my back."
I'm sure there's no connection between fat-cat fund-raising and, say, federal tax policy. But there was some particularly interesting information about the Bush tax cuts in an article yesterday by The Times's David E. Rosenbaum. Citing data from a study by Citizens for Tax Justice, Mr. Rosenbaum pointed out that the richest 1 percent of Americans will get an average tax reduction of nearly $100,000 a year, while "the tax relief most people will receive is quite meager."
Half of all taxpayers will get a cut of less than $100 this year. By 2005, three-quarters will get less than $100.
The middle class and working people don't seem to mind that they've been blithely left behind. Mr. Bush's approval ratings are way high, so high they've got the terminally timid Democrats scared to death to confront the president head on. The man who elbowed his way into the White House with a minority of the popular vote is on a roll.
But while these may be the best of times for George W., this is not such a great moment for America.
Start anywhere. Tax cuts? Mr. Bush has behaved like a profligate parent who spends every dollar the family has accumulated, mortgages everything the family owns and maxes out every credit card he can get his hands on. At some point in this scenario the children and grandchildren will be left with nothing but a mountain of debt.
Jobs? More than three million private-sector jobs have been lost on this president's watch. People are staying out of work longer and the pay gains of the late 90's are being eroded. Time Magazine recently asked, "Why are American workers dying the death of a thousand pay cuts?"
Government services? Prepare to wave goodbye to Medicare and Social Security as you've known them. Right wingers have always wanted to cripple the government's social service programs and now they are racing toward achievement of that poisonous goal. With the president's tax cuts bankrupting the government, there will be no money left for meaningful support of even the most popular social programs.
The environment? Among other things, the Bush White House does not like global warming. So it just edits out, eliminates, erases important references to it in official government documents. Gas-guzzling S.U.V.'s are good. But in the Bush II White House, global warming as most scientists know it doesn't even exist.
We've got some waking up to do.
A budget catastrophe is hammering state and local governments across the country, driving up taxes and fees, and driving out important government services. This story is still not getting the attention it deserves. Some public school districts have had to shorten the school year because they ran out of money. In some areas medical services to seriously ill individuals are being curtailed. In some jurisdictions, criminal offenders are being released from prison early, and some criminal laws are not being enforced because of a lack of funds.
Because of cuts in the police budget, station houses in Portland, Ore., now close at night.
These are not topics that will be explored in depth at this evening's presidential fund-raiser. And you can bet that there will not be any straight talk about the quagmire we are sinking into in Iraq, or the outlandish deceptions that the president employed to get us in there.
No, this will be a fun evening filled with the sound of joyous plutocratic laughter. Mr. Bush will leave with his pockets bulging and the wind at his back. The reality of life in George Bush's America for working men and women, and for the poor, will be left for others to attend to, presumably in some post-Bush administration.
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