"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot. We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise."
-- Indiana Republican Representative Mike Pence, leader of the Republican Study Committee
On Wednesday, September 21st, a group of 100 members of the U.S. Congress calling themselves the "Republican Study Committee" held a press conference "before a phalanx of television news cameras" to announce their plan "to provide for the needs of the families affected by [Hurricane] Katrina without raising taxes." Their plan--which they call "Operation Offset"--hasn't been widely reported in the Mainstream Corporate For-Profit Agenda-Setting Bound Media, but it is extensive and detailed, and gives some valuable insight into the philosophy of the nation's current leadership.
Ever-lower taxes is a core principle of so-called "supply-side economics," which is the theoretical basis upon which the Republican Study Committee's Operation Offset rests. The members of the RSC don't like deficit spending, either (who does?!), so they propose financing hurricane reconstruction by slashing other public spending. Except, tellingly, the military, which they would leave largely untouched. (See related article in this issue of the Notes.)
Reading the media, one might think that there is a widely-shared desire among United Statesians to refrain from raising taxes to address the current emergency. But a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll, conducted between September 16th and 18th, asked people "Would you, personally, be willing to make major sacrifices, minor sacrifices or no sacrifices at all in your taxes or government benefits to allow the government to spend money to address the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina?" A full 84 percent of United Statesians said they would be willing to help out by paying higher taxes or taking some (unspecified) cuts in benefits. This poll has yet to be reported in this country, not even in USA Today, which is sort of odd, since they helped pay for the survey.
Another relevant point in regard to the decision on raising taxes is the historical level of taxation in this country. Again, no news organization bothered to mention, in this context, that taxes in the United States as a share of the national economy are currently at the lowest levels they have been since 1959.
The same unreported poll mentioned above asked people to choose "the best way for the government to pay for the problems caused by Hurricane Katrina." By far the top response was to "cut spending for the war in Iraq," which was chosen by 54 percent of respondents. Only 6 percent preferred to "cut spending for domestic programs such as education and health care." Responding to the Minority
Regardless of public opinion or history, the "cut spending/no tax increase" approach to the hurricane appears to be the one favored by the Bush administration. White House spokesman Scott McClellan told the Washington Post on September 21st that "There are tough choices that are going to have to be made. We're going to have to cut unnecessary spending elsewhere in the budget to offset some of the cost with Katrina."
The Post then mentioned "Operation Offset," describing it simply by calling it "a proposal [that would] include repealing many of the pork-barrel projects stuffed into the $286 billion highway bill that Bush signed into law a few weeks before Katrina struck."
But the reality of "Operation Offset" is much more than cutting "pork." The actual cuts are so extreme and so far-reaching that I think it's worth pulling out a few highlights. I'll list a few numbers, along with a few quotations from the actual document. The numbers are all the RSC's estimates of "savings" over 10 years, so I can't vouch for their accuracy. But, accuracy aside, you'll see their intent, which is the point here. They propose to...
ELIMINATE: Federal Anti-Drug Advertising; The National Endowment for the Arts; the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
ELIMINATE: The Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal services to poor people. The rationale for this $1.8 billion cut: "LSC has a long history of legal abuse and fraud, including providing resources for individuals to sue the government for more generous federal benefits."
ELIMINATE: Native Hawaiian Funding. This funding provides "various health and education programs for Native Hawaiians." About this cut of $557 million the RSC says, "Native Hawaiians are a racial group not a tribe and dispensing benefits to them would likely be subject to strict scrutiny in Federal courts."
CUT: Almost a quarter of a TRILLION dollars ($245.6 billion) in spending on Medicaid, the health insurance program for the poor. In addition, the RSC proposes cutting $1.4 billion for Community Health Centers, which also help poor people.
CUT: $172 billion in spending on Medicare, which serves seniors and people with disabilities.
CUT: $7 billion in spending for the Global AIDS Initiative.
CUT: $7 billion in school lunch and school breakfast programs.
CUT: $1.3 billion in funding for U.N. Peacekeeping Operations. Rationale: "Current military obligations in Iraq and Afghanistan, including U.S. peacekeeping efforts in the region, are not deducted from what the U.N. assesses the U.S. in dues."
CUT: $23.3 billion in Federal Grants for Wastewater Infrastructure. Rationale: "Some contend that by providing failing states with these grants, the federal government is giving the states an incentive to retain poor wastewater treatment infrastructure."
CUT: $5.6 billion for the Department of Energy's Environmental Management program, which was created in 1989 "to mitigate the risks and hazards posed by the nuclear weapons production and research."
There's lots more. 24 pages worth, in fact.
No one believes that Operation Offset will be adopted in total by the federal government. As the Associated Press put it in one of the rare stories about Operation Offset, "Many of the ideas ... are likely political nonstarters... [and] they are extraordinarily difficult to get through Congress, even one dominated by supposedly tightfisted Republicans." They are talking about disagreement on the details. The basic approach--"no tax increases," continued increases in military spending, and cuts in domestic public spending--is certainly not a "nonstarter," and much of it is already being implemented (or proposed) by the Bush administration, based on the same philosophy of government that produced "Operation Offset" and that drives the Republican Study Committee that produced it.
While the details of "Operation Offset" have been little-reported (you've just read far more detail on this report than you'll see in the corporate press), all of us have heard much about the so-called "conservative response" to Hurricane Katrina. You might not know it, but there is something called "The Progressive Caucus" in the U.S. House of Representatives. Not only have they failed to appear "before a phalanx of television news cameras" to give a "progressive response" to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina, their website hasn't even been updated since August.
That is not to say that there is no such thing as a progressive response to the disaster. In fact, there are at least a couple of eloquent and far-reaching responses that could easily be found by the media. One response is already completed and another one is in process. What should make them newsworthy is that they give coherent form to proposals that opinion polls indicate reflect the desires and values of the vast majority of people in this country. More on these proposals in Nygaard Notes #309. |
