I know that is your basic premise that allows you to claim that the 5 trillion dollars spent by Bush admin did not go to the rich.
1 - Its the truth.
2 - Assume it false and still most of the spending didn't go to the rich. The biggest spending programs are entitlements, some of which only go to the poor, others of which go to all sectors, but which spend much more on the non-rich than the rich.
But your POV has been pretty much rejected by the public.
No it hasn't. The public hasn't indicated any opinion about it. They don't like the war, that doesn't equal "the war is a transfer program to the rich". They are mad at pork that doesn't equal "pork was created by Bush to help the rich".
Even if they had rejected it that wouldn't be much of an argument against it. Truth is not decided by popularity. But in fact there has been no poling or other evidence that any such rejection has taken place.
and too many NO BID CONTRACTS
No bid contracts are not unusual in the early going, when things have to be spooled up quickly. The federal bidding process takes time, and time is of the essence in war. Clinton used no bid contracts in much smaller conflicts.
But I'll do you the benefit, of accepting for the sake of argument that the continued function of no bid contracts increased costs and examine the increase as a "giveaway to the rich".
You talk about $5tril, but we've spent much less than that.
OK, well take the much lower figure of what we've actually spent. Well the most of that spending was not on no bid contracts.
Well take the much lower figure that went to bid contracts, well some of those where properly no bid, because the program had to be started almost right away rather than waiting on the bidding process.
OK take the at least slightly lower figure that went to unjustified no bid contracts. Well a large part of that money would have been spent even if the contracts had faced the full bidding process.
OK take the much lower amount that's the extra spending because of no bid. Well some of that money didn't go to rich people.
So take the fraction left that did go to rich people. Your talking about a fraction, of fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a fraction, of a fraction of your multi trillion dollar figure. Still a lot of money in every day terms, but not a significant portion of government spending while Bush was in office. Which doesn't mean it can't legitimately be criticized. If he $10 bil went to the rich because of all of this, you can of course attack him for that $10bil, its just not significant in terms of what the current conversation is about.
If you believe that this was some porkish attempt to reward rich people, you could argue it was corrupt, if you don't believe is was so intentional but still think it wasted a lot of money, you could argue it was a horrible waste.
But neither assertion is certain, and even if we assume both are true they don't provide any significant level of support for the "reverse robin hood claim".
They might give you reasons to bash Bush with some other claim, but they don't support the claim in question.
Medicare drug plan- a trillion dolllars- who gets that money? the recipients of the plan?
Mostly. They are paying less in insurance for drugs than they would without the subsidy.
They have to pay more in COPAYMENTS for the same drugs they could get in another country for cheaper
That's irrelevant. They aren't in another country. If the drug program wasn't passed they would be paying even more for the drugs in most cases.
Which doesn't mean I support the program. Just that it does effectively subsidize drugs for the less than wealthy. The fact that it might not subsidize them as much as other countries do, doesn't mean its a negative subsidy just that its a smaller subsidy. Its still a net subsidy. |
