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Politics : Stop the War! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Patricia Trinchero who wrote (1967)	3/23/2003 6:56:04 PM
From: Doug R	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 21614

yikes I'm blushing...<g> Costly tax cut Poor children, veterans, elderly get body-slammed under GOP plan. (Published Friday, March 21, 2003, 8:37 AM) If you've been wondering who would pay for the big new tax cuts for the rich that President Bush is pushing, wonder no more. The Republican budget writers in Congress have started to supply the answers: Poor children, veterans, the elderly and any middle-aged person counting on Social Security and Medicare when they retire will pick up this bill. Budget writers in both the House and Senate budget committees went along with most of the $1.6 trillion in tax cuts the White House wants. But they recognized you can't have something for nothing without creating enormous and permanent budget deficits. So under the leadership of Don Nickles, R-Okla., the Senate committee solved the problem with a plan that calls for the budget to return to balance in 2013 through spending cuts that won't be enacted until this year's sixth-graders are old enough to vote. Talk about your basic profile in courage. The House committee, under Jim Nussle, R-Iowa, was more forthright. It instructed legislators to cut nondefense discretionary spending -- the portion of the budget that goes for education, science, transportation, parks and the like -- over the next decade by $200 billion. And then it ordered $450 billion in cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, veterans benefits, food stamps and children's health insurance. It's grotesque to pay for a tax cut for the wealthiest households by taking food from the poor and reducing health care for the elderly and children. But even by grinding the weak and unfortunate, the budget writers don't come close to restoring budget responsibility. The Nickles budget, phony as it is, runs up $4.3 trillion worth of red ink in the non-Social Security portion of government over the next decade; the Nussle plan bleeds to the tune of $3.7 trillion. And that doesn't even count items, such as paying for the Iraq war and its aftermath, that are virtually certain. Whether they meant to or not, the budget writers have demonstrated the utter lunacy of Bush's tax cut proposals. As the trustees of the Medicare and Social Security systems reminded the country again this week, there's a tidal wave of retiree costs about to hit the nation's budget beginning in 2008. Those systems need $10 trillion worth of fixes to balance their promises with their likely resources. But all the GOP budget writers offer is succor to the rich and pain to the poor. They should be ashamed of themselves, but that's obviously expecting too much of them. fresnobee.com