Summertime, and the Budget’s Sleazy

Posted by Andrew Macurak on May 27, 2008

Is it ever an inappropriate time to reflect on the idealistic 1960s? Energy was cheap, America’s role as a global hegemon was secure, Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater left conservatism seemingly dead in the water (does anyone else see a trend here?), and a bill of grassroots anti-poverty and urban reinvestment programs crossed our national agenda for what unfortunately was the last time.

Although at this point criticizing the Bush administration is less fair than shooting fish in a barrel, the American public is entitled to wonder why around crucial budget seasons Washington neocons renew and redouble their effort to eviscerate programs that contributed to one of the most prosperous and secure times in our nations history, invariably attacking the tried-and-true community development block grant (CDBG) program and the remaining descendents of Great Society initiatives overseen by HUD.

According to the Transportation Equity Network, the proposed Bush budget outlined the following cuts:

TEN reports that Bush proposed a 22% cut to programs to help low-income families afford heating gas, a wholesale elimination of the community services block grant, a $200 million cut in funding for Medicare and Medicaid, a $2 billion cut impacting teaching hospitals and medical research, and a host of other one-two punches to domestic policy’s bruised gut.

Meanwhile, in 2007, funding for the CDBG program was already at its lowest level since 1992—the year of the last budget Shrub Sr. could get his grubby, erstwhile, Thatcherian paws on. As a consequence of the regular bloodletting of federal support for local initiatives, community and economic development, youth and workforce investment, and health and human services agencies are seeing funding dry up, from leafy Evanston, Il to the booming Atlanta metro area to New England burghs like Portsmouth, NH.

Even HUD itself argues:

It is increasingly clear that an outdated formula that once measured the needs of urban America no longer reflects the modern needs of todays cities, larger urban counties and States. The FY 2009 proposal is in line with the Presidents commitment to target resources to areas of greatest need.

In the face of so much adversity, CDBGs, those Little Engines that Could, continue to think they can, they think they can, they think they can, creating or maintaining 140,000 jobs, funding public facilities and infrastructure used by more than 18 million people, and assisted more than 340,000 households with basic housing needs between 2005 and 2006. (For specific case studies, see the U.S. Council of Mayors Web site select Community Development Block Grant Success Stories from the drop-down box.)

The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, says the U.S. is “far and away the global leader in military spending,” outspending the next 45 highest spending nations combined. Adding insult to injury, while attacking nearly every domestic policy initiative in a purported effort to balance the books, the budget both increases spending on defense and outlines the biggest deficit since 2004. Blogger and alternative journalist Tom Engelhardt writes that the Pentagon’s request represents a 70% increase over 2001—a figure that doesn’t include supplemental funding requests for excursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. This includes $10.5 billion for missile defense—apparently George Lucas isn’t the only person remaking Star Wars in the 2000s. Meanwhile, Engelhardt also reports that Credit Suisse predicts that as many as 12.7% of all residential borrowers may face foreclosure by 2012.

Is the wealthiest nation on earth truly unable to afford both guns and butter?

Click here.

Our ersatz party of the people, those newly populist Democrats dont think so, and have inserted an extra $25 billion for non-defense agencies. Except that $25 billion depends on revenue streams that won’t begin until the Bush tax cuts expire in 2010—let me remind you that the budget year in question is 2009—and the Dems didn’t touch Bush’s slap-in-the-face defense spending. Nevermind that the Congressional budget resolution does not actually establish, you know, a budget – it just sets basic parameters for expenditures to be decided by further resolutions.

By postponing this debate for another Congress and another administration, the hawks get what they want while our highways crumble, our working class takes a beating, and our budget runs a deficit of $340 billion—and that’s a conservative estimate (no pun intended). Maybe our nation’s legislators are hesitant to regulate subprime lenders because soon theyll be the only ones willing to finance this nation.

When this country invested in its physical infrastructure, it had economic prosperity—see railroads and turnpikes in the 1800s, and the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. When it invested in its own people in the 1930s and again in the 1960s, it reached new heights of human development. Even if this latest neocon budget impasse is done away with by the coming of a new administration, lets not sacrifice programs that have empowered communities at the local level in favor of the embodiment of the military-industrial complex, even for one year. The 1960s arent so far-gone that Americas midcentury prosperity and buoyant middle class aren’t impossible to recreate.

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