A Lump Of Coal For America's Poor [View All]

[G_j]

A Lump Of Coal For America's Poor

by Bill Vaughan, TomPaine.com Exclusive

Families USA's Vaughan on a choice facing Bush this Christmas: cut taxes for the wealthy or cut funding for nursing homes?

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/a_lump_of_coal_for_americas_poor.php

Bill Vaughan is government affairs director of Families USA.

Here’s a moral choice for Americans this holiday season: Give more tax breaks for millionaires and cut payments to nursing homes, leaving our elderly out in the cold, or put a break on the tax cuts for the wealthy and protect funding for the Medicaid program—the only health lifeline for 51 million Americans, including seniors in nursing homes.

That’s the decision we will soon be asked to make. The president is preparing his budget request for 2005, and will make key decisions by the end of January, including—most likely—making all previous tax reductions permanent. That will cost about $1.65 trillion over a 10-year period. At the same time, the Pentagon is expected to ask for another $70 billion for our military efforts in Iraq. Nonetheless, the president says that, over the next four years, he wants to cut in half our country’s unprecedented deficits of about $422 billion. And let’s not forget about Social Security privatization. If the most-talked-about option is honestly accounted for, it will increase deficit borrowing by about $1 to $2 trillion.

Maybe in some twilight zone of a parallel universe he could do all these things, but in our universe, the numbers don’t add up. To achieve these goals, he will have to ask for massive, massive cuts in existing programs.

What existing programs could possibly make a dent in the funding of these various new proposals? Cut Social Security when you claim you are reforming it without cuts? No way. Cut Medicare? That will be tough, especially considering potential senior voter turnout.

..more..