Who Is Really Making The Sacrifices?

Because the budget is the guts of government and all the rest is feathers, it’s worth taking another look at what Congress is doing to ours. It’s also worth a look because the overall shape of the budget is obscured behind an unusually thick murk of rhetoric this year.

Here, for example, is an explanation that House Speaker Newt Gingrich offered for the Republican plan to cut $270 billion out of Medicare: “Think about a party whose last stand is to frighten 85-year-olds, and you’ll understand how totally morally bankrupt the modern Democratic Party is.”

This level-headed, straightforward explanation of the Republican cuts is typical of what passes for discussion in D.C. these days. Ever since political consultants discovered “hot buttons” - those issues to which people react with fear or anger instead of a calm “Hmm, how can we fix this?” - it seems that our politicians just cannot stop pressing our “hot buttons.” The harder they press, the more we react and the less we think.

The big drum that has been beating all year is “Balance the budget, balance the budget, balance the budget.” Exactly when and how balancing the budget became our highest national priority, superseding the Constitution’s prescription to “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” is not quite clear.

Let’s leave aside the matter that so exercises the economists. There is no more guarantee that the Republican plan will balance the budget in seven years (or that President Clinton’s plan will balance the budget in 10 years) than there is that Elvis is alive and pumping gas in Cleveland.

The Republicans have assured us all along that balancing the budget will require “sacrifice.” Normally when politicians inform us that they are about to call upon us to “sacrifice,” we brace ourselves for a tax increase. But no, lo, this year, “sacrifice” will involve lowering taxes, said the Rs. And that, friends, is when we should have slapped our collective forehead and said, “Goll-ee, where is the deed to this bridge that you are givin’ me?” Not since Ronald Reagan told us he could cut taxes, balance the budget and increase military spending by $2 trillion have we been offered a deal like this.

The questions to ask about this budget are: Who is being sacrificed, and whose taxes are being lowered? Have the R’s cut military spending, an obvious target ever since the Soviet Union dissolved? No - in fact, they gave the Pentagon $7 billion more than it asked for, re-funded some notorious clunker weapons systems of no use to anyone, brought back Star Wars (and then insisted that they hadn’t brought back Star Wars) and included several handy-dandy chunks of pure-dee pork in the home districts of members of the military appropriations committees.

Well, then, did they get rid of corporate welfare, those famous subsidies to advertise California raisins in Japan and orange juice in Italy? Did they cut off the tobacco subsidy, the milk subsidy and the sugar subsidy, and close those famous tax loopholes written by special-interest corporate lobbyists who are big buddies with important committee chairmen? Did they fix the 1872 mining law whereby a Canadian mining company can pay $5,190 for the rights to a Nevada gold mine that’s potentially worth $10 billion? Did they end cowboy socialism and raise the fees for grazing permits to market level?

Well, no, they didn’t do any of that, and in fact, they have written a mind-boggling array of brandnew special loopholes into the tax laws and given away an impressive number of permits for greedy corporations to come in and despoil public lands without paying a song for the privilege. They are debating, however, about making it illegal for private charities to lobby on behalf of the needy.

The Center for the Study of Responsive Law reports 153 sources of federal business welfare in the 1995 budget totaling $167.2 billion, or $1,388 per individual taxpayer. The Nader-related group found that social welfare projects including Aid to Families With Dependent Children, food stamps, housing assistance and child nutrition cost $50 billion per year, or $415 per individual taxpayer.

While cuts in basic research at public agencies harm everything from the environment to health, seven large companies - Amoco, AT&T, Citicorp, DuPont, General Electric, General Motors and IBM received $278 million in technology subsidies between 1990 and 1994, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. This supposedly helps create jobs, yet the seven companies cut their U.S. job forces by 339,038 during the same period while generating profits of $25.2 billion in 1994 alone.

U.S. taxpayers will spend $1 billion to cover the costs of plant shutdowns and employee relocations because of the merger of Lockheed and Martin Marietta. While an estimated 30,000 workers lose their jobs, top officials of the new combined company will enjoy a $31 million present from taxpayers (and that’s only a third of their annual bonus package). The company is expected to generate $11.6 billion in annual military sales, according to the Nader group’s report.

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