IN THE NEWS

Editorial

Chattanooga Times Free Press

TAX CUTS VS. VETERANS' BENEFITS

February 8, 2005

Budget analysts have predicted for two years that the free-wheeling borrow-and-spend policies of the Bush administration and his rubber-stamp Republican-controlled Congress would crash head-on soon into the wall of massive debt they have generated the past four years. That crash is occurring now. To confirm that, Americans need only examine the administration's proposed budget for the new fiscal year. The question now is whether we have become so numb to the Republicans' fiscal profligacy that we have lost our ability to be shocked, or to demand a turnaround.

Just a few highlights of President Bush's proposed budget -- and its glaring cuts and omissions -- for the new fiscal year reveal the dimensions of the fiscal collision.

* After promising to begin trimming the massive federal deficits the administration has run for four straight years -- and promising to cut them in half by 2009 -- Mr. Bush's newest budget projects the largest deficit yet. At a projected $427 billion, the new deficit, another record, will outstrip the current year's $412 billion deficit.

* The new budget fails to include any of the cost of making the Bush tax cuts permanent, though they would grow the national debt by some $2 trillion over the next 10 years.

* The budget also fails to include a down payment on the estimated $2 trillion, 10-year cost of privatizing Social Security (a cost that reaches $4.5 trillion over 20 years) as Mr. Bush proposes.

* The budget also does nothing to address the pending explosion in Medicare costs and trust fund deficits, the real fiscal crisis facing the country.

* And lastly, the new budget requires a number of cuts in the relatively narrow range of programs and costs -- representing roughly 15 percent of the federal budget -- in which the administration has the flexibility to cut costs.

A notable example of the latter is the administration's proposal to raise the costs of medical treatment for veterans. Specifically, Mr. Bush proposes to double the monthly cost of prescription drug co-pays for military veterans, to install a $250 annual fee on veterans for access to veterans' medical facilities, and to proceed with closing some veterans' clinics and hospitals.

Given the administration's ill-founded war in Iraq and persistent campaigning on the military's coattails, even the most die-hard Republicans should find these particular cost-cutting measures offensive.

Veterans' benefits are just one of the many domestic targets for cuts in the new budget. Still, putting them on the table is telling. It demonstrates the lengths to which the Bush administration will go to keep the tax cuts for the wealthy and big corporations intact.

Inherent in the cuts of veterans' benefits is a notable contradiction. While Mr. Bush proposes to raise prescription drug costs for veterans, he persists in denying all Americans, including veterans, the right to import cheaper prescription drugs from Canada and other foreign countries. And he still refuses to allow Medicare authority to bargain with pharmaceutical companies for lower prices, though Medicare, in representing seniors who purchase 60 percent of the nation's prescription drugs, could exert immense downward pressure on drug prices for all Americans, including veterans.

There is no credible way for Mr. Bush to mask his bias for tax-benefit favors for the rich and big corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans, and the long-term debt burden he is pushing off on our children. As destructive as the administration's fiscal policies are for the vast majority of Americans, they accurately suggest that Republicans' hearts lie with the affluent few their policies really benefit.