My father's weekly column.
'“WE’VE BEEN HAD!” (3/2)
Some time back I heard this story from a Nigerian friend. “Two men arrived at our village. They said they had come to bring us a gift that would answer all our needs forever. They handed us a package and told us to close our eyes and pray. We did, and when we opened our eyes our gold was gone and our land was gone. It was then we realized that we had been had!”
There is growing evidence that we, the American people, are beginning to open our eyes and realize that we are about to be similarly had. It has long been the goal of conservatives to kill off many of the progressive steps taken in the last hundred years, including the dramatic advances of the New Deal, Social Security, the rights of organized labor, Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, Medicare, right down to last year’s health insurance legislation. But how to do it?
The answer dawned on them. It was to employ an old trick. Claim to be solving a critical problem and use that solution to attack something else you have long wanted to destroy.
The escalating national debt is the real problem. We cannot sustain multi-trillion dollar deficits. Increasing expenditures while cutting income is the rocky path leading over an economic cliff. At the same time, the nation is experiencing more immediate difficulties. Unemployment hovers around ten percent. Two wars are eating us alive economically. Hundreds of thousands have lost their homes, their savings and their hope. Along come people with a gift package, which we are told will solve our problems forever. “Trust us,” they say.
Well, we are just now beginning to peek at what has been happening while we were meditating. While the real problems remain, the new Republican House has managed to launch a mouse-sized solution to these elephant-sized issues. “Cut spending,” means gut the things that those who don’t vote for Republicans believe important. Take a look at a few programs seriously reduced or eliminated in the House bill:
Environmental Protection Agency
National Endowment for the Arts
Institute for Peace
Amtrak
White House advisors
Planned Parenthood
Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Heating subsidies for the poor
National Labor Relations Board
Control of cement plants and other sources of pollution
Any funding which supports the health insurance law
Head Start
College Pell Grants
Medical Research
Primary Education
Women infants and children nutrition program
Agencies supporting homeless shelters, Meals on Wheels and job training
The list goes on. All this is a drop in the bucket in dealing with the Nation’s debt. But debt reduction may not be the primary purpose. The hidden intent may be to dismantle progressive programs.
Obviously little of this will get by the Senate. And even if it does, it will face a sure veto. But it all may be only a set-up for next year’s election in which the Republicans look forward to taking control of the Senate and the White House. For now the minuscule dent the House bill makes on the deficit solves little. The really big items are left untouched. The enormous expenditures involved in the Defense Department were not examined. Nor were the problems inherent in a health system, including Medicare, which will grow even more difficult as the population ages. While only a full public option or single-payer system will address the fiscal dilemma inherent in health insurance, that issue was ignored. And, of course, nothing was said about increasing revenue a few hundred billion by eliminating the Bush tax breaks for America’s millionaires and billionaires, who will certainly not be impoverished even if we return to of fairer more progressive tax system. Addressing that issue will save more money than all the cuts in the House’s onslaught.
In the meantime, Republican administrations in the States, which have their own drastic financial problems, are taking out after organized labor. But that may not be so easy a target. Conservatives have always detested the rights and power of unions. They fought the 40 hour work week, the minimum wage, “The Occupational Safety and Health Administration,” mandated health care and everything else that goes with workers’ rights.
My guess is that as the American people are already beginning to wake up and to realize that their gold is gone and their land is gone. This may be the first zephyr in a robust change in the political winds.
Charles Bayer
Charles Bayer is a somewhat retired theological professor and congregational pastor. He and his wife live at Pilgrim Place in Claremont, Calif., where he is still involved in writing a newspaper column and a variety of other jobs, boards and activities.
Past articles can be viewed here:
http://www.seniorcorrespondent.com/articles/list?xtags=charles-bayer
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