Bush's Class War Budget

[Itsthetruth]

OP-ED COLUMNIST
Bush's Class-War Budget
By PAUL KRUGMAN
New York Times
February 11, 2005

It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. And it offers the Democrats an opportunity, if they're willing to take it.

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.

And the budget really does shower largesse on millionaires even as it punishes the needy. For example, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities informs us that even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.

It's like that all the way through. On one side, the budget calls for program cuts that are small change compared with the budget deficit, yet will harm hundreds of thousands of the most vulnerable Americans. On the other side, it calls for making tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and for new tax breaks for the affluent in the form of tax-sheltered accounts and more liberal rules for deductions.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?oref=login

[Coastie for Truth]

1. Dupe

Great minds run in the same paths.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=103&topic_id=105420&mesg_id=105420