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by David Sirota, Christy Harvey and Judd Legum February 3, 2004
THE BUDGET The WP reports that President Bush's 2005 budget "shows considerably more political concern for his conservative base" than for nearly anything else. Specifically, the budget proposes spending cuts which, while crippling important programs, won't actually make much of an impact on the burgeoning deficit. According to the paper, "the names of several programs on the chopping block - housing assistance for the elderly, vocational education, lead-hazard reduction, local law enforcement grants - allow the president to argue that he has put forth a tough-minded spending plan for 2005." At the same time, massive tax cuts for the wealthy which dwarf these spending cuts emerge unscathed, as the Administration continues its quest to make them permanent. According to Bob Greenstein, of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, "It amounts to class warfare in reverse...It proposes to continue every tax cut for the most affluent people, even adding very large new tax cuts, while starting to cut significantly into basic programs like child care and housing assistance." (Make sure to read the CBPP analysis of the budget and the new American Progress study showing how small an effect non-defense, non-homeland security spending actually has on the deficit.) SHAFTING THE UNEMPLOYED: Despite millions of Americans either out of work or coping with stagnant wages, the budget unveiled by the White House yesterday doesn't contain much good news for the unemployed. According to the WP, "Even as the economy fails to generate significant job growth, Bush would slice federal vocational and adult education funding by 35%, from $2.1 billion to $1.4 billion." The AFL-CIO reports that despite the President's pledge to seriously fund job training "under the budget proposal, a portfolio of programs designed to provide job training and skills development—dislocated worker funding, adult programs, youth formula grants, youth opportunity grants and the employment service—have seen cuts of $1.3 billion in real dollars since Mr. Bush became president." SHAFTING RETIREES: The budget contains a proposal to allow employers to switch from traditional pensions to "cash balance" plans, legislation which could harm older employees, who "can see their ultimate pensions cut by 20% or more" in order for companies to boost earnings. As part of the budget, the Treasury Department proposed two measures it claims will help protect older workers. However, "it is unclear yet whether other measures in the proposal would offset these protections, and employee advocates say the protections won't help older workers whose pensions already have been converted." SHAFTING EDUCATION: Educators are unhappy with the President's budget, and no wonder: Thirty-eight of the 65 government programs eliminated are related to education, including programs dealing with "alcohol abuse, the arts, dropout prevention, school counselors, smaller learning communities, school reform, and school leadership." The $247 million Even Start family literacy program? Gone. The same is true of the Eisenhower regional math and science consortiums and the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Math and Science Education. The National Education Association reports, the funding proposed for No Child Left Behind "falls short of promised levels of funding by more than $9 billion for the coming year." SHAFTING PELL GRANTS: In his State of the Union address, President Bush claimed he wanted "larger Pell Grants for students who prepare for college with demanding courses in high school." But as the WSJ reports this morning, "most students won't get any more help than they receive now." Specifically, the budget does not increase the value of the Pell Grants. In 1976, the Pell Grant "covered about half of the cost of tuition, room and board at a public college." Today, however, it "covers only about one-fifth of average public-college costs, and even less of private-college expenses." Already the Administration has tried to eliminate 84,000 students from the Pell program by using a controversial new formula to calculate eligibility. And while the President proposed "an additional $1,000-a-year grant to low-income students," even this program is woefully underfunded: "[T[he administration is asking for only $33 million, which is enough for just 33,000 of the current 15.8 million college students." SHAFTING THE MILITARY: Instead of alleviating the burden on our over-stretched and under-protected soldiers, the Administration has proposed spending money on untested, expensive missile programs. President Bush is proposing giving "substantial boosts" to missile defense, allocating $10.2 billion in the new budget, up $1.2 billion from last year. This increase comes after the GAO reported that "the planned system contains components ‘that have not been demonstrated as mature and ready'" and "the Pentagon's top weapons tester voiced doubts last week about whether the system was being tested enough before its planned deployment." These funds could instead be used to support our troops, for example, by helping to cover the cost of permanently increasing the size of the active Army to alleviate the pressure on our active and Reserve forces who have been serving back-to-back missions. SHAFTING VETERANS: Veterans too were shut out of the budget. The Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) calls the budget "disgraceful," "harmful," "deplorable" and proof "that veterans are no longer a priority with this Administration." With only "a $500 million increase in medical funding, the administration's budget falls $2.6 billion short of what the Independent Budget recommends is needed to fully meet the demands for quality veterans' health care." The budget does "nothing to alleviate the many thousands of veterans who are waiting six months or more for basic health care appointments with VA. Instead, [it] seeks to drive veterans from the system by realigning funding, charging enrollment fees for access and more than doubling the prescription drug co-payment." The VFW says "the American people will not tolerate this shoddy treatment of America's veterans, especially at a time of war." SHAFTING HOUSING: According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, "funding for the housing voucher program, the nation's principal low-income housing assistance program, would fall more than $1.6 billion short in fiscal year 2005 of the amount needed to continue support for the vouchers in use." This means "at least 250,000 fewer low-income families and elderly and disabled households would be served." SHAFTING CRIME CONTROL: The new budget eviscerates a program that puts cops/first responders on the streets and protects the homeland. The budget for the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) would be cut from $481.9 million to $97 million, despite a recent report by former Sen. Warren Rudman (R-NH) saying the Bush Administration was leaving first responders "drastically underfunded and dangerously unprepared." SHAFTING THE KIDS OF WORKING FAMILIES: In his budget submission the President proposes to extend the child tax credit to $1,000 and to make it permanent. However, in doing so, he fails to provide any additional child credit assistance to the 12,000,000 children in working families, including approximately 200,000 children in military families, who need it most. SHAFTING RURAL DEVELOPMENT: The AP reports, "President Bush's proposed budget for next year includes cuts in rural development assistance." The budget would cut $239 million from rural business and industry loans, $269 from a rural broadband loan program, and $199 million from rural water and wastewater grants. SHAFTING THE STATES: Slashing the federal budget while preserving tax cuts will cause a ripple effect in the already beleaguered states. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates, "funding for discretionary grant programs to state and local governments would decline 1.1% in 2005. States also would lose state tax revenue as a result of the federal tax cuts in the budget (due to linkages between federal and state tax codes). States already face about $40 billion in deficits in state fiscal year 2005. The reduction in aid to states would result in a loss of roughly $6 billion in buying power, which would force many states to institute deeper budget cuts or tax increases." In Illinois, for instance, the problems could be severe. As the Chicago Tribune noted, "austere budget for domestic spending that President Bush proposed would reverberate through Illinois with deep cuts in federal aid for fighting street crime and in housing vouchers for low-income families, along with modest trims in myriad services." PROMOTING THE CONSERVATIVE AGENDA: While slashing the aforementioned priorities, the White House is sparing no expense to pander to its hard-right base and lavish taxpayer money onto decidedly conservative, though questionably practical, programs. Although there is evidence the program doesn't work, the budget "includes doubling, to $270 million, spending on programs to encourage teens to abstain from sex." It also will divert money in the welfare budget to promote marriage, including $240 million giving states grants to promote marriages and limit out-of-wedlock births, $120 million to research and pilot programs on marriage promotion, and $50 million to "promote responsible fatherhood." In his first comments after reversing course and announcing his support for an independent investigation into the overhyping of WMD intelligence, President Bush said, "first of all, I want to know all the facts." It was a troubling comment, considering the Administration's unequivocal prewar assertions that Iraq definitely had WMD and was planning to use them against the United States. His comments were also troubling considering just how many substantive warnings the Administration was given by the intelligence community showing that the President's WMD rationale for war was weak – warnings that were even more thorough (and unfortunately ignored by the White House) than originally thought. As Newsweek exclusively reports, two separate government panels – including one chaired by Donald Rumsfeld - reported before the war that assertions about Iraq's WMD "were based on suspicions, not hard data." The panels "got access to CIA materials" and concluded that the "absence of hard evidence was so striking" that they specifically developed a "Wizard of Oz theory: that the whole Iraq WMD program was smoke-and-mirrors, and Saddam was just a little guy behind a curtain." SCRUBBING INTEL TO SKEW THE CASE: Just 10 days before the crucial vote authorizing the war in Iraq, the Administration took the unprecedented step of declassifying parts of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and sending it to members of Congress. But as Newsweek reports, the declassified version of the NIE "was stripped of important caveats and footnotes" so as to present the most persuasive case to wavering lawmakers. And while the White House may argue that it only eliminated minor details, those omissions were the same direct warnings about having "no evidence" of WMD that the White House was ignoring for the better part of two years. THEY USED TO TELL THE TRUTH: While the Bush Administration officials attempt to shift the blame for its overhyping of WMD intelligence, previous comments from these same officials prove there was a time when they heeded the intelligence community's warnings that the President's WMD case was weak. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, who in pressing for war said Iraq was "armed with weapons of mass destruction," said on 7/29/01, "We are able to keep arms from [Saddam]. His military forces have not been rebuilt." Secretary of State Colin Powell, who in pressing for war said Iraq's WMD posed a "real and present danger to the region and to the world," said on 2/24/01 that Iraq was "contained" and that Saddam "threatens not the United States." Vice President Dick Cheney, who in pressing for war said Iraq poses "terrible threats to the civilized world" and is a "serious threat to our country," admitted just after 9/11 that "Saddam Hussein's bottled up." The questions are, why did the Administration start ignoring intelligence it did not like and change these positions? Why did the Administration set up an office in the Pentagon to circumvent intelligence that did not fit a predetermined policy? In short, why was the case so skewed? POWELL'S ADMISSION: Despite the White House's recent efforts to claim they justified the Iraq war on humanitarian grounds and that it makes "no difference" whether WMD are found, Secretary of State Colin Powell became the first Administration official on record after the war to state the obvious: the Administration's case was predicated wholly on the supposed threat Iraq's WMD posed to Americans, and not finding WMD calls the entire invasion into question. The WP reports Powell says "he does not know whether he would have recommended an invasion of Iraq if he had been told it had no stockpiles of banned weapons." Asked if he would have recommended an invasion knowing Iraq had no prohibited weapons, Powell replied: "I don't know, because it was the stockpile that presented the final little piece that made it more of a real and present danger and threat to the region and to the world." He said the "absence of a stockpile changes the political calculus; it changes the answer you get." QUESTIONING THE COMMISSION'S SCOPE: The President's decision to only support a WMD commission whose scope may be limited and which only reports after the election is facing serious criticism. AP reports, "Current and former U.S officials said they fear that Bush will try to limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other agencies and ignore the key role the Bush administration's own internal intelligence efforts played." The officials "said that intelligence efforts led by Vice President Dick Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions." Similarly, Knight-Ridder reports current and former officials said, "What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq will never be known unless the inquiry examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks." Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote to Bush that, "One of the major questions that needs to be addressed is whether senior administration officials, including members of the Cabinet and senior White House officials, misled Congress and the public about the nature of the threat from Iraq...Even some of your own statements and those of Vice President Cheney need independent scrutiny." Former weapons inspector David Kay, with whom the President met yesterday, agreed, saying, "the commission should look into everything." QUESTIONING THE COMMISSION'S INDEPENDENCE: The Pelosi-Daschle letter also raised serious questions about why the White House says the commission will be independent yet is appointing all of the commissioners itself. The letter said, "A commission appointed and controlled by the White House will not have the independence or the credibility necessary to investigate these issues." Joseph Cirincione of the non-partisan Carnegie Endowment for Peace "said the commission would not be truly bipartisan or independent because Mr. Bush would appoint its members and define its scope." He said, "I just spoke to the staff of 30 senior Democrats and none of their staff have been consulted on this panel. The President is trying to dig a defensive line to stop the damage. If he does it right, the commission can help him but, if he does it wrong, it will make it worse." ENVIRONMENT It's little wonder that the White House can propose slashing funding at the EPA by 7.2% – in this Administration, industry lobbyists are in charge of environmental regulations. The WP compared the EPA's new mercury emission rules with two memos sent to federal officials by Latham & Watkins, the lobbyists for Cinergy Inc. and other major energy companies, and found "at least a dozen paragraphs were lifted, sometimes verbatim, from the industry suggestions" – not shocking, considering the two EPA air quality officials overseeing the mercury rule changes previously worked at Latham & Watkins. It is also not surprising, considering that since 2000, employees of Latham & Watkins have contributed over $68,000 to President Bush, while Cinergy has contributed $19,750 to the President. The new EPA mercury rules – which particularly affect children - abandon plans to require coal and oil-fired plants to reduce mercury pollutants, instead adopting a more flexible "cap-and-trade" program favored by industry that could precipitate higher levels of mercury in some localities. Claudia M. O'Brien, who wrote the memos for Latham & Watkins, "said it was 'gratifying' that the EPA found the firms' analysis persuasive." BUSH ENERGY PLAN WRITTEN BY LOBBYISTS: This isn't the first time the Administration has been caught plagiarizing from industry wish lists. In March 2002, a court ordered the Department of Energy to release documents related to the secret White House energy task force. An analysis of the documents by lawyers for the Natural Resources Defense Counsel reveals that industry lobbyists essentially wrote significant sections of the Administration's energy policy. Specifically, Executive Order 13211 was "nearly identical in structure and impact to [an American Petroleum Institute] draft, and nearly verbatim in a key section." Also, an Administration proposal to weaken the Clean Air Act was lifted from an e-mail to the Department of Energy written by a lobbyist for the Southern Company. Southern Company has contributed $44,800 to President Bush over the last four years. DIGGING DEEP FOR HALLIBURTON: Late last month, the Secretary of the Interior announced she would allow industry to profit off federal property without reimbursing taxpayers. Specifically, the proposal eliminates royalties that oil/gas companies pay when drilling on government property in the Gulf of Mexico. The plan is expected to cost the Treasury nearly $1.1 billion over the next ten years. A primary beneficiary? Halliburton. MORE GULF DRILLING MEANS MORE CASH FOR HALLIBURTON: According to a 02/11/03 press release by Magic Earth, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton, technology they are developing will "be able to generate better exploration prospects in challenging reservoir environments such as deep shelf Gulf of Mexico gas and global deepwater environments." In 2002, another Halliburton subsidiary, Subsea, developed a state-of-the-art deep water support vessel, the Viking. Edgar Ortiz, President of Halliburton's Energy Services group, touted the Viking as a demonstration of "our further commitment to expansion within the Gulf of Mexico market place." Halliburton has also partnered with Shell to develop "cutting edge" tubing for deep water drilling and a Real Time Operation Center to monitor Shell's deep water operations in the Gulf. GALE NORTON – SECRETARY OF DRILLING: With little fanfare, Gale Norton announced on January 22 that she had signed off on a plan to open up over 7 million acres of Alaska's North Slope to oil and gas development. The area is just west of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and some of the drilling would "occur in areas important for migratory birds, whales and wildlife." The same week, Norton announced she planned to "triple the number of drilling permits approved in Wyoming's natural gas fields." Critics contend that Norton is dramatically increasing the number of permits without determining "the cumulative impacts of drilling on a broad scale" or setting aside enough money for cleanup.
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