Do we want our government to protect sick and elderly people or don't we? Do we want poor children fed, alternative energy supported, parks protected, or not? Is a war that has nothing to do with national security, except that it may endanger it, a sound justification for failing to fund veterans of previous wars?
It has become so predictable that the major media must have decided it's no longer newsworthy. In late June, Republicans on the U.S. Senate's Budget Committee passed another irresponsible bill. This one not only would continue the Republicans' steady deconstruction of the federal government of the past five years; it also proposes radical and dangerous changes in the way budgets get developed.
Budget Chairman Judd Gregg's bill has several dangerous flaws. First, it would result in sweeping cuts to domestic spending over many years. Instead of a program-by-program assessment of needs, it proposes dramatic across-the-board cuts in all domestic programs, except for Social Security. This bill proposes to meet the entire Republican-created deficit by cutting domestic spending on programs for veterans, the poor and unemployed, and Medicare. Needless to day, it would dramatically increase the number of uninsured and underinsured Americans.
The bill would also create a draconian standard for Medicare's and Medicaid's budget process that the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities predicts would result in dissolving Medicaid as we know it within a few years and instead inadequately meet health care needs with state block grants. It would dramatically increase premiums, deductibles and co-payments that Medicare beneficiaries pay or create major cuts in what Medicare would cover.
Despite setting in place a budget system that would slash a wide spectrum of domestic spending, the Gregg bill exempts tax cuts from such fiscal accountability.
In addition, the bill would set in place a dangerously undemocratic budget process. It would create a commission to propose eliminating programs, and its decisions could be achieved by a simple majority. Congress could then address the commission's proposals through a fast-track process that would preclude amendments and would require only a simple, partisan majority to pass them.
This travesty of democratic process would be bad enough, but the Gregg bill goes further and sets in place a line-item veto that would give the president power to eliminate funding for individual programs. In fact, the president would have power to override congressional decisions, even if Congress had specifically voted to disapprove his veto.
Does anyone else think this president and this Congress have forgotten the genuine democratic premises that our nation just finished celebrating Tuesday? Do others recognize an unconscionable power grab when they see it?
Well, do you?
Fascism: any program for setting up a centralized autocratic national regime with severely nationalistic policies, exercising regimentation of industry, commerce, and finance, rigid censorship, and forcible suppression of opposition.
Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary
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