Why Republicans Secretly Love Huge Budget Deficits

BUZZFLASH GUEST COMMENTARY

By Jacqueline Marcus 

The other day, CBS radio news reported that “Obama inherited some debt, but now he’s making it worse by adding to it.” The critic refused to say that we inherited an eight trillion dollar budget deficit from the Bush administration.  He used the word “some” as if it were a slight debt.   Even now, the corporate media continues to protect Bush and Cheney by not holding them accountable for irresponsible, “out of control” spending.   

In 1992 President George H. Bush left President Clinton a staggering budget deficit.  It’s important to remember the history.

The 1993 budget signaled the return of fiscal responsibility: President Clinton’s economic plan…not a single Republican voted for the balanced budget package. It squeaked through the House by one vote, and Al Gore had to vote to break a 50-50 vote tie.

The plan slashed the deficit in half; extended the life of Medicare Trust Fund; expanded a tax cut called the Earned Income Tax Credit, which benefited fifteen million lower-income working Americans' reformed the student loan program, saving taxpayers billions of dollars; and created empowerment zones an enterprise communities that provided tax incentives for investing in distressed communities. To pay for these reforms, the plan raised taxes on gasoline and on highest-income Americans.” (Source: Living History, by Hillary Rodham Clinton, p.179 Nov 1, 2003). 

In addition to balancing the budget, President Clinton secured a $211 billion surplus, the largest surplus ever, even after adjusting for inflation.

The minute Bush and Cheney entered, the surplus was raided for all their oil friends; plenty of tax benefits for the super rich.  The White House was turned into a war-spending Las Vegas.  This time, Bush/Cheney made sure that no one could balance the budget again.  Trillions went out the door for wars, (weapon contractors), not for veterans or soldiers, and then came the big loans from China and Russia with interest rates growing higher and higher to an inconceivable amount.  No one can possibly comprehend such an endless deficit.   The Bush Administration made damned sure that we would stay in debt with no way to balance it again.

In addition to an out-of-control Pentagon budget that is taking close to 60 cents from every tax dollar for weapon contractors, there is the deliberate intention, on the part of Republican leadership to bust the budget for two main reasons: 1) end all corporate regulations by making the government dysfunctional and 2) end all social programs for the people.  Bush and Cheney were victorious in accomplishing these goals.

In The New York Times, it’s reported that “there is virtually no room over the next decade for new domestic initiatives for President Obama or his successors due to huge deficits.

Meanwhile, defense spending is increasing our debt, leaving absolutely no funding for social programs: health insurance, education, infra-structure, jobs…Sorry, the Government is closed, except to corporate lobbyists. (Republicans applaud loudly) 

“The defense industry is pleased but bemused,” said Loren Thompson, the chief operating officer at the Lexington Institute, a policy group financed partly by military contractors. “It’s been telling itself for years that when the Democrats got control it would be bad news for weapons programs. But the spending keeps going on.”  

What exactly is this New World Order that Bush Sr. so often referred to?  The New World Order is a military corporate police state.   The U.S. has only one thing to sell: weapons and killing people.  If you want a job, go join the military.  Indeed, the corporate Republicans have the people right where they’ve always wanted them: begging for jobs, begging to do anything.  As Dostoevsky put it, “When people are starving, they don’t want freedom or a democracy, they want food.”  As George Bush said, “A dictatorship would be a lot easier.”  Meanwhile, the corporate media is turning up the terrorist fear dial to make Obama look weak on national security just in time for the next elections.  They’re so predictable.

Jacqueline Marcus' book of poems, Close to the Shore, was published by Michigan State University Press. She is a regular guest contributor to BuzzFlash.com. She taught philosophy at Cuesta College, San Luis Obispo, California, and is the editor of http://www.ForPoetry.com. She is currently promoting green technologies (solar & wind) on the island of Maui. www.GoSolarMaui.com. She is currently working on a new book: Corporate Media and the Erosion of a Civil Society