weaving a rich tapestry of
Posted By: pettyspiteful on 2008-09-22
In Reply to:
today's posts. I saw Gov rendell say that to make the voters in PA happy, all they needed was a warm place to do their business and some big shoes. That might explain a few things about today's subjects
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Many rich are rich because they too are hard
xx
LOL, this is rich! sm
Patrick Buchanan who the liberals labeled "certifiable" during his last presidential bid but not that he is saying what you want to hear, he's a great guy! That's okay, because Zell Miller said just the opposite of Patrick. Up is down and down is up!
This is rich.
Since when is it UnAmerican to want to know the TRUTH? Why are you people so ANTI-TRUTH? Wouldn't surprise me if this administration goes down in history as much more corrupt than Nixon.
In the middle of a "war"??!! Bush should be protected because we're stuck in HIS war that HE started based on HIS LIES? At the very least, it would show the entire world that not ALL Americans condone lying, attacking and occupying sovereign nations for no reason. I personally hope they FRY him and hold him and all those involved in his administration accountable for every single EVIL thing they have done.
Your theory that we shouldn't do this while we're in the middle of a war is like the guy who killed both his parents and then threw himself on the mercy of the court because he's an ORPHAN.
Whatever happened to "The truth will set you free"? Why are you people HATE the truth so much?
that 5% rich...
he is among them. wonder how much comes out of his pocket and how much o his own wealth he has been redistributing??
If you were rich, would you be saying that?
I know I wouldn't, especially after I had worked so hard to get the money I earned. Unfortunately, I'm not rich by any standards, but I'm infuriated and insulted by Obama's thinking that I need a hand out from those with more money! If we take money from those who have it and give it to those who don't, where's the motivation for those that don't have it to get it for themselves? Why would they want to go to school to get a better paying job or go for that promotion at work if they know that first of all, they can sit back and get it for free and second of all, if they do start making more money, they'll just have to turn around and give it to someone that doesn't have it! How is it that the American Dream has turned into the American Entitlement?
who hates the rich?
Just another broad generalization of how **we people** believe/feel/think..Rich people? I dont hate people I dont know..be them rich, poor or in between. I have loved and cared for the best and the worst..I could write a book (smile). To say we dont like or hate the rich..another broad generalization and bigoted statement by a neocon. I dont judge a person by their riches, I judge them by what they are giving back to this earth and when they pass, will the earth be a little bit better off for them being here..
Who knows any rich people???? nm
nm
never said rich were evil
I never said the rich were evil. I said there are many who dont care about the working class and yet you defend them. As an example, I just read a news article earlier this week that Dr. Phil pays his transcriptionists $7.00 to $8.00 an hour!!!!!!!!! Have you ever seen Dr. Phil's house in LA? I have passed it a few times..OMG!!!! Let me tell ya, the guy can afford to pay his transcriptionists better than that. If it wasnt for Oprah, he would still be working in Texas and not a celebrity but does it even make him realize, hey, I got a stroke of good luck thanks to Oprah, maybe I should take care of my staff better. Obviously he is one of the rich who does not get it. Sure there are some who care and give back, as they realize how lucky they are and there but for the grace of God go I. I have seen personally some rich give back greatly, some volunteering at jobs every one else would be paid for, giving to charities and so much more. The good ones realize they must give back, cause that is just the way it should be in a moral caring upright society. The others, they cant get enough money. Their religion is money. The more millions they have, they are worrying about how to make millions more.
The rich ARE the democrats
Look back over time. Who benefitted from tax breaks Clintons 2% of the richest people. Everyone makes it sound as though only republicans are rich. The democrat party has some of the richest people and they aren't paying their fair share. With the Democrats I've always had to pay more taxes. With the republicans I received refunds every year.
Ain't that rich! - see link
Did George Bush serve his country??????? I'd say Obama served his country right on our shores by working with the impoverished in Chicago. GW wouldn't dirty his hands and neither would McSame.
McWayne looks like a corpse with too much makeup on. One heartbeat away from the presidency? JC...............It is God's will we are in Iraq? W?
No Bailout for the rich
Say no to the bailout. The FBI is investigating all of these companies for criminal mortgage fraud.
Rich does not mean corrupt........
xx
Obama is a rich fat cat as well! You are being
nm
maybe sam's one of them rich oil pubs
well-being of the rest of us.
Exactly......since when is RICH supposed to be
xx
What problem do you have with being rich?
Not sure what you call rich but you seem to be very bitter towards anyone who has more than you. MOST RICH in this country have worked their butts off to get where they are. They educated themselves and work more hours than most to get where they are. They have sacrificed a lot and they should not have to pay for those that sit on their butts and do nothing for a living, except walk to the mailbox the 3rd of every month to get their check.
I can guarantee you if you were rich, whatever number you consider that to be, you would be keeping your mouth shut because you would not appreciate some socialized nut job coming in and telling you to give more than half of what you make to some lazy bum on the street and pay for all their needs while yours go unmet.
Get a reality check!!
There's plain ol' rich, and then there's
Like yer Wall Street execs, bank CEO's, etc. Even worse our this nation's spoiled, mollycoddled pro athletes.
Does any of their wealth trickle down to us? Nope. The more tax breaks and loopholes they get, the more we have to take up the slack and fill in the gaps.
If they can pay a football player $38 million to play a stupid game, then I think those of us who actually work for a living should at least get a few more cents per line.
You seem to have struck it rich in a
x
Obama is rich, and
The Kennedys and plenty of philanthropists are rich. Look, it shouldn't be trickle down economics. It should be trickle up for a change. Let's not wait for the crumbs and I'm sorry but anyone who is an MT is probably not rich.
Why don't the mega rich..........
toss down some billions to help their country out? It's a tax write off......wait until their houses get robbed, their cars get keyed and their yachts get pisd on. Don't think for a minute their hired help won't be getting even in some nasty, discreet way......I think I want to be a CHEF!
That's rich, JTBB....lol...nm
would you have a problem with being rich?
nm
'Rob from the rich,
give to the poor' is unamerican. 'From each according to his abilities, to each according to his need' is unamerican. 'You poor fellow, lemme give you some of that guy's money' is also unamerican. 'Give me liberty or give me death' is American.
Oh, this is rich. You accuse me of drinking and then cry when it happens to you. SM
Typical liberal double standards. 
To those who think the rich should pay their FAIR taxes..
Bad news for Democrats: Top 5% of taxpayers paid 53.8% of all indiv. income taxes...
Okay, this is the one area Democratics leaders always try to mislead the American public on: The rich get major tax breaks. The rich get all of the Bush tax cuts. The rich pay no taxes. Of course they never want to explain what an unproportional percentage the wealthy in this country pay to taxes. Now to the FACTS from the Department of the Treasury: The latest data is from the 2002 taxes. The following incomes split levels from the IRS are (% of total individual income tax in parenthesis): Top 1%: above $ 285,424 (33.71%) Top 5%: above $ 126,525 (53.80%) Top 10%: above $ 92,663 (65.73%) Top 25%: above $ 56,401 (83.90%) Top 50%: above $ 28,654 (96.50%) Bottom 50%: below $ 28,654 (4.50%) The President's Tax cuts actually increase the burden on the wealthy while providing greater relief to the bottom 50 (who are not contributing proportionally to the federal coffers). DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY Office of Public Affairs March 2, 2005 FACT SHEET: Who Pays the Most Individual Income Taxes? The individual income tax is highly progressive – a small group of higher-income taxpayers pay most of the individual income taxes each year. • In 2002 the latest year of available data, the top 5 percent of taxpayers paid more than one-half (53.8 percent) of all individual income taxes, but reported roughly one-third (30.6 percent) of income.
• The top 1 percent of taxpayers paid 33.7 percent of all individual income taxes in 2002. This group of taxpayers has paid more than 30 percent of individual income taxes since 1995. Moreover, since 1990 this group’s tax share has grown faster than their income share.• Taxpayers who rank in the top 50 percent of taxpayers by income pay virtually all individual income taxes. In all years since 1990, taxpayers in this group have paid over 94 percent of all individual income taxes. In 2000, 2001, and 2002, this group paid over 96 percent of the total.The President’s tax cuts have shifted a larger share of the individual income taxes paid to higher income taxpayers. In 2005, when most of the tax cut provisions are fully in effect (e.g., lower tax rates, the $1,000 child credit, marriage penalty relief), the projected tax share for lower-income taxpayers will fall, while the tax share for higher-income taxpayers will rise.• The share of taxes paid by the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers will fall from 4.1 percent to 3.6 percent. • The share of taxes paid by the top 1 percent of taxpayers will rise from 32.3 percent to 33.7 percent. • The average tax rate for the bottom 50 percent of taxpayers falls by 27 percent as compared to a 13 percent decline for taxpayers in the top 1 percent. Summary of Federal Individual Income Tax Data
stop defending the rich
Either you are rich or a fool..Do you actually think the rich are defending us the way you are defending them? We need to take care of the people who carry America on their backs, the middle class. The rich could not care less about us. They dont even know the workings of every day life. I have an extremely well off friend..he does not use credit cards..pays with cash..told me I should just pay with cash for my new Jeep that I bought a few years ago instead of monthly payments..yeah, right, LOL..thanks for the advice...moon beam..he never even used an ATM..thinks being rich is justified cause they can show us Renoir paintings (as when Bellagio had Steve Wynns paintings on show), they can show the little people the beauty of life..Oh geez..the rich do not even realize that the middle class exists..other than to work at their companies and factories, so they can stay rich.
who trashed rich republicans?
My post referred to rich people, not rich democrats or rich republicans, there can be nasty out of touch rich republicans and rich democrats. Where did you read that my post was putting down on rich republicans? Once again, you conservatives amaze me..you read things that arent there or you pump up the information you have to fit your own agenda and bias. Your post made no sense because no one from the posts I have read was trashing/putting down on republican rich.
Me..tear people apart...that's rich!
I did not use phrases like keep your butt in your chair and *defecate. That was your class act.
If Lurker does not mind being grouped with you, far be it from me to care. You can champion whoever you like.
Are you as angry as you sound? ;-)
Republicans = The rich and the fools.
dd
That's rich....coming from the party who is trying to...
silence talk radio. So much for free speech. There is that nasty double standard again.
That's rich, isn't it? "No President is above the law..."
Bill Clinton ring a bell?
Rich slithering around the country....
Well, I do know several rich families. One in particular that is very well off. They have a son who voluntarily went into the military out of high school and then went on to college. He wanted to make the military his career but his wife saw otherwise, so he does reserves. Well, he has been sent to Iraq twice, watched friends blown up in front of him, barely made it back alive himself. Now, he is being redeployed to Afghanistan in a few weeks, leaving behind his wife and two small children. He is one who firmly believes he is doing the right thing, even though this is extremely hard on his family. His rich republican daddy didn't make that decision one way or the other for him, he did. His rich republican daddy is very proud of his son. He could have not entered the military, but he chose to. He is a very successful businessman in his own right and not because of his father. He has worked hard in his own career. And, shock of all shock, he is WHITE!!!! I cannot tell you how many republican whites in my church alone have been deployed over and over to Iraq and Afghanistan, so you need to stop your pity party and false accusations that just poor blacks/nonwhites are sent off to war. Remember, none of them had to sign up, they chose to, just like all the whites who put their name on the dotted line did. We have lost dozens of young men in our nearby communities to Iraq, and I can honestly say it wasn't more blacks/nonwhites to whites. You really need to stop spreading that kind of thinking. Just be grateful there is no forced servitude into the military (drafting), which is not what a free country should have in the first place. I don't want anyone fighting for my country who is being forced and not a willing participant.
What corporations and rich folks have done for you...
they already and have always paid the bulk of taxes that keep this country running. But you still want them to pay more? You really think it is fair for those who have been successful to redistribute their money to other people? Be punished for success? I do not get that mindset. Sorry.
As to the rich having more power...the remedy to that is getting someone in Washington that will address the under the table power brokering, under the table pork barrelling and under the table lobbying. McCain is the one who has a history of trying to do just that. With the veto pen, he can put his money where his mouth is.
And contrary to popular opinion, not all rich people are Republicans. If Obama thinks higher taxes on the rich are the answer and all his supporters think so, then let him tax all rich Democrats. Let them check that box on their income tax returns and just give more. Let HIM do that. They could have been doing this all along. Stop taking all the deductions they take. Put their money where their mouth is. Lead by example. And if they want to redistribute that to other Democrats, more power to them. Just leave we independents and republicans who do not want to participate out of it.
Works for me.
Obama's definition of rich
Being so hateful and against Hillary all these months (and for Obama), after finding this article I now am rethinking my decision as to why I thought he was the better of the two.
Obama's Scary Definition of "Rich"
I was a bit alarmed last night when during the debate Obama said that people who earned $97K a year are not part of the middle class and therefore should have their payroll taxes raised. Good grief, if this guy gets in the White House, hide your wallets.
If Obama thinks someone making $97K a year is in some way "rich" and not part of the middle class, I hesitate to think what tax hikes he has in store for people who make $250K or more.
I worry when I find myself agreeing with Hillary, but I found myself nodding when she responded by pointing out that in some states such a salary is definitely middle class, and that in New York school superindents, school principals, fire department chiefs, etc., etc. earn more than $97K and yet certainly can't be considered "rich."
Mike Griffith
------------------------------------------------------------
"Maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world. . . . I feel it to be my duty to add . . . a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public
service. . . ." -- John Adams, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1797
I'm surely NOT RICH and I want no part of it in my
country. Like the other poster said, Cuba has real estate for sale. How many Cubans (besides that little boy that was adrift and landed in the US) actually want to go BACK to Cuba??
Somebody got a little hatred of RICH folks?
McCain's wife coming from money has no bearing....she is an awsome woman, just as her husband is an awesome man. Get over it that you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth for heaven sake.
And since when do the rich and powerful get to make...sm
all the decisions for the hardworking, undereducated, less intelligent, the poor and middle class to their own benfit. That is not a democracy.
Keep it up girl! RICH is NOT a bad word, only for
!!
'outlaw' something that so many of 'em got rich
sheesh
He said it was patriotic for the rich to pay more taxes -
I can hardly disagree with him. The rich of the United States are not sending their children to war to die, they don't get dirty when the country needs it, what is wrong with asking them to contribute something more?
Do you really believe Barry is going to tax the rich democrats
No, his rich democrat buddies will get richer and we will be paying for it. Obama's purpose is to put the middle income class now in the lower income class (distribute the wealth and make us all poor). Meanwhile you really think he's going to tax his rich democrat buddies (Franks, Pelosi, Reid, and hundreds others). I found this article to be interesting.
http://www.go4thgop.com/news/issues/richgetricher.htm
The rich dont deserve a tax cut? They already pay a
nm
Obama is rich in his own right - not just the presidency -
he can spend money any way he pleases. Believe me, if I had that kind of money, I would be going to broadway too!
CLASS - that's rich!!! ROFL - LOL -
Why all this defense of the poor downtrodden rich?
You said:
Yes, the rich get the bulk of tax cuts, that's because THEY pay most of the taxes.
I say:
That's because they make most of the MONEY. That's perfectly right. And yes they pay a higher rate which is also perfectly right because they are not paying taxes on WAGES. Capital gains and investment income - i.e. money that was not earned by hard labor - SHOULD be taxed at a higher rate. We know that if we win 20 grand in the lottery the government is going to take up to half of it, right? - we expect that. We expect free money to be taxed at a higher rate than wage income. So why are you fretting about free money for the rich being taxed at a higher rate also?
As far as tax revenues being higher now, the answer to that is ridiculously simple - many more people soared into higher tax brackets during the boom years of the Clinton administration and their new wealth is now generating more free money which then gets taxed and flows into the revenue coffers. Now are you glad about this or not? You can't say both the poor rich are being abused by high tax rates! and at the same time parade around praising Bush for his financial saavy because look, the revenues are overflowing! That's kind of schizophrenic. And besides the glow of joy is going to have to fade a bit when you consider that no matter how high revenues are, the exorbitant and wasteful spending of this administration has caused such huge deficits that your grandchildren will still not be seeing any benefit from those increased revenues.
And in addition, there are MORE people in general now, so of course tax revenues will rise with a rise in population. BushCo uses the same old tired tactic of braying about more people own homes now than ever before in the history of the country! Well duh. That's because there are more PEOPLE. More people = more total homes owned. They aren't talking percentage of the population owing their own homes. Instead they try to take credit for a simple total number that they had nothing to do with increasing.
Have to watch these guys - they know how to spin a statistic, but spin is all it is. Too bad it keeps right on fooling the worshippers.
Kerry and Kennedy rich, for sure - selfish, not.
Kennedy has stayed in public service for these many decades as has Kerry, when they could be doing something else. But instead of spending their time in Congress creating new ways to make themselves richer and thinking up new ways to take over the country and bully all opposition into fascist submission, they actually serve their constituents and take a stand against the rampant Republican pilfering and self-serving crony capitalism. It's that old noblesse oblige thing that old money has, you know? - totally and conspicuously absent in the peon Republican gamebook.
The surplus also followed him out eh? We know because it's now in the bank accounts of the rich.
A lot of people made a lot of money during the Clinton years - that's real money, honey, and they're still rich, accounting for our current revenues. Without the Clinton boom years your president's buds (and your president himself, let us remind you) wouldn't have gotten their 100,000 tax break checks. Sure, the boom couldn't hold, but the point is that the favorable conditions created by a sounder Democratic fiscal policy allowed that boom to come about.
Now all we have is empty coffers, slashed public spending, and China owns us. Big improvement huh? Oops, but people like Frist are still getting over big time on their big time stock trades - all's clear in the upper 1% But since you likely aren't in it, it's hard to see what you find so appealing about being a credit slave one paycheck away from poverty. Is that working out good for you?
Hey Libby, where's all the noble rich people?
Sure is a shame all those rich guys can't spring a buck for the effort. And where is the Republican base? - the pro-war screamers can't seem to put their money where their mouths are any more than they can bring themselves to enlist for the cause. Let somebody else do it, seems to be their motto!
The rich DO give back... Your problem...
is that you take one example of something and make sweeping generalizations about the entire group. Barbara Streisand sits around telling the rest of us to hang our clothes on the line, while she consumes 10x what the average family consumes in her many homes and automobiles, and I bet hasn't hung something on a line in 50 years. There are people who do selfish crappy things all over the political spectrum, but you use examples to pain an entire political party, and it's wrong.
Taking from the poor, giving to the rich
US House of Representatives approves $50 billion in social cuts
By Joseph Kay
19 November 2005
In the early hours of Friday morning, the House of Representatives
passed a budget reconciliation bill that includes cuts of nearly $50
billion over five years, primarily in social programs for the poor.
At the same time, Congress is considering extending tax cuts that
overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy in the amount of $60 billion-$70
billion over the same period.
The budget reconciliation bill modifies requirements for mandatory
spending programs, in particular, entitlement programs such as
Medicaid, Social Security, Food Stamps and Medicare. Unlike the rest
of government outlays, known as discretionary spending, which are
allocated each year in appropriation bills, spending for these
mandatory programs is determined by legal requirements. If the
reconciliation bill is signed into law, it will mark the first time
since 1997 that entitlement programs have been slashed.
The House passed the bill 217-215 after Republican leaders kept the
vote open 25 minutes to drum up sufficient support. It will now go
to a House-Senate conference committee, where negotiators from the
two chambers will work out a compromise between the House bill and a
Senate bill passed earlier this month.
The Senate version includes cuts amounting to $35 billion over five
years. While leaving out some of the most egregious cuts in the
House version, the Senate bill includes one major provision left out
by the House: the opening up of the Alaskan Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge (ANWR) for oil exploration.
The compromise will then be subject to a final vote in both chambers
before going to President Bush to be signed into law.
Major cuts in the House bill include:
* Cutting Medicaid spending by $11.8 billion. The bill would place
new restrictions on the ability of elderly people to transfer assets
to relatives so as to become eligible for Medicaid, and would allow
states to charge higher premiums and co-payments for emergency room
visits and some drugs. It would give states greater discretion to
cut services for low-income recipients who earn more than the
poverty level, including such services as eye and ear care.
* A $14.3 billion reduction in spending on financial assistance for
college students. The bill repeals a previous 6.8 percent cap on
interest rates for federal student loans, increasing it to 8.25
percent. One estimate calculates that this would lead to an increase
of $5,800 in payments for a college student graduating with a debt
load of $17,500. The bill includes other increases in taxes and
interest on a variety of loans, as well as a provision to reduce
subsidies to lenders.
* Cuts in the Food Stamp program totaling $700 million. The bill
would end a provision that automatically enrolls welfare recipients
in Food Stamps, denying eligibility to approximately 165,000 people,
mainly among the working poor. It would deny Food Stamps to
approximately 70,000 legal immigrants by extending the waiting
period for eligibility from five to seven years. Since eligibility
for Food Stamps automatically gives children access to free school
lunches, thousands of students may be stripped of this benefit. This
cut will worsen an already growing problem of hunger in the US. An
article in the Boston Globe of October 29 noted, The number of
people who are hungry because they cannot afford to buy enough food
rose to 38.2 million in 2004, an increase of 7 million in five
years. The number represents nearly 12 percent of US households.
* Other measures include nearly $5 billion in cuts associated with
child support enforcement; $577 million in cuts for child welfare
programs; a reduction of $732 million in social security income
payments, including payments to some disabled people; and more
stringent work requirements for welfare eligibility.
House passage of these draconian measures demonstrates the
determination of the ruling elite to continue its assault on social
programs. Hurricane Katrina, which laid bare the persistence of
poverty and the growth of social inequality, as well as the
devastating consequences of decades of neglect of the social
infrastructure, is being used as an excuse to accelerate the very
policies that compounded the disaster.
The position of the Bush administration and the Republican-
controlled Congress is that the tens of billions appropriated for
immediate hurricane relief and reconstruction in New Orleans and
other Gulf Coast areas must be offset by a more determined assault
on entitlement programs for working people and the poor. At the same
time, there is to be no retreat in providing tax windfalls for big
business and the rich.
This was spelled out in a summary of an earlier version of the bill
published by the House Budget Committee, which stated that the bill
was intended to provide a down-payment toward hurricane recovery
and reconstruction costs and begin a longer-term effort at slowing
the growth of entitlement spending and stimulate reform of
entitlement programs, many of which are outdated, inefficient, and
excessively costly.
Speaking before the right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation,
Tom DeLay, the former House majority leader who was forced to step
down after being indicted on corruption charges, made clear that the
budget was intended to spearhead a permanent rollback of social
programs. He said the budget would not only provide the nation
immediate fiscal relief, but also institute permanent reforms of the
way our government spends money and solves problems.
Last month, Bush urged Republican congressmen to push the envelope
when it comes to cutting spending. On Friday, he welcomed the House
bill and called for Congress to quickly pass a final version for him
to sign into law.
The ultimate bill as agreed by the conference committee will likely
include many of the cuts in the House bill. Senate leaders,
moreover, have vowed to reject any bill that does not include the
opening up of the ANWR, which has been a major goal of the energy
industry and the Bush administration.
At the same time that Congress is negotiating these cuts in social
spending, it is preparing the passage of a separate tax cut
reconciliation bill. The two bills were deliberately separated in an
effort to obscure the connection between tax cuts for the wealthy
and cuts in social programs.
Early on Friday, the Senate passed a bill that would cut taxes by
$60 billion over five years. This includes $30 billion in cuts
resulting from an extension in exemptions to the alternative minimum
tax. It also includes $7 billion in tax cuts for corporations as
part of Bush's so-called Gulf Opportunity Zone—a scheme to use the
hurricane as an opportunity to give handouts to businesses. The
Senate rejected any windfall tax on record oil company profits;
however, it did include an accounting rule change that is expected
to increase taxes for oil companies by about $4.3 billion over five
years.
The House is considering a companion bill. However, its version
would focus on extending tax cuts on dividends and capital gains
that are not due to expire until 2008. These taxes are paid
overwhelmingly by the wealthy. Once the House version is passed, the
two bills will go to a conference committee. Bush has vowed to veto
any bill that includes the accounting change for oil companies.
There is some nervousness within the political establishment over
the budget process. House Republican leaders were forced to delay
their budget bill for a week as they sought to win enough support
within their own party to push the bill through, and the final
version slightly pared down some of the cuts in Food Stamps and
other programs.
The two measures—the one cutting social programs for the poor, and
the other providing tax cuts for the rich—constitute such a blatant
redistribution of wealth from the bottom to the top that several
Republicans have opposed the measures. Congressional elections are
only a year away, and the mounting popular opposition to the Bush
administration has caused Republican representatives to fear losing
their seats.
On Thursday, the House voted down the appropriations bill for the
departments of Labor, Education and Health and Human Services, after
the defection of a number of Republicans. The bill, which includes
cuts in various pet projects for representatives as well as in
social programs such as rural health care, may have to be modified
or attached to the defense appropriations bill in order to push it
through.
In spite of this nervousness, the consensus within the ruling elite
is that social programs must be cut one way or another. Democratic
opposition to the size of the current cuts notwithstanding, both
parties agree on this basic policy, which has been ongoing for more
than a quarter century.
The Democrats are themselves proposing no significant measures—
whether for jobs, housing, health care or education—to deal with the
acute social crisis exposed by the Hurricane Katrina disaster,
underscoring their abandonment of any policy of social reform.
The current budget reconciliation process is in many ways a
continuation and deepening of cuts initiated by the Clinton
administration, which ended welfare as a federal entitlement. The
1996 budget act, moreover, permanently barred legal immigrants from
receiving Food Stamps. In 2001, the Bush administration modified
this provision to allow legal immigrants to receive Food Stamps
after a five-year waiting period. The House is now proposing to
extend the waiting period to seven years.
The bulk of the tax cuts for the wealthy enacted under Bush were
voted in with the support of the Democratic Party leadership, while
at the state level Democratic governors are overseeing massive cuts
in Medicaid and education programs.
The new budget bill places in sharp relief the fact that the entire
political system is an instrument of big business, dedicated to
increasing the wealth of a financial aristocracy at the expense of
the working class. It is one more _expression of the crisis and rot
of the profit system.
Yes! It's not the rich & special treatment that bothers me.
He made tougher laws for drug crimes. The rich will alwys get better treatment. Paris Hilton's special treatment doesn't scare me. She isn't putting people in jail for her same offense.
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