George W. Bush has proposed a FY2005 budget that’s to be dead on arrival, or on its way to Mars, named for the god of war. Way back in 2001 Mr. Bush told Congress he'd "pay down $2 trillion in debt over the next ten years...That is more debt, repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history." Now he wants to add another $2 trillion over ten years to what is the largest deficit in U.S. history. Even lockstep Republicans worry about the effect of an uncontrolled deficit. Despite earlier tax cuts that mostly benefited the rich, his highest priority is to make the cuts permanent and add more tax cuts. The million-a-year crowd would get a handout averaging $100,000. Why the enormous deficit? Despite Bush’s claims to the contrary, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that 36% of the deficit is due to tax cuts, 31% for military and war-related expenses and the economic turndown accounting for the rest.

On Groundhog Day, the White House emerged to announce a cold wave for domestic programs. Bush’s 1-1/2% percent increase amounts to a cut if you count inflation. Military spending, for the first time since World War II, will be higher than the domestic budget. Despite all the talk of reliance on local police, fire and emergency workers as the frontline for domestic security, local communities would face a cut of $1 billion. State and local governments need to make up the difference or lack equipment needed to do the job. Plans to modernize the air traffic system would crash while public transportation faces a train wreck. Corporations using creative accounting or moving headquarters to no-tax zones in places like Bermuda would face even less scrutiny due to cuts in the IRS budget. The myth of high taxes explodes when we find that 15.8% of the U.S. pay more than but get more visible results, including national health care.

Who are the losers in all this? Low and middle-income taxpayers are pay higher taxes and then pay more for services that were once the responsibility of government. Look at your sewage and garbage bills. And they get less in return on taxes, fueling the cry for lower taxes that repeats the cycle. Next we’ll be forced to pay to fix the potholes in front of our houses. Privatized education means that our kids become a source of profits while my granddaughter may lose her music and art class and has to sell hoagies to pay for extras. The poor face cuts or elimination of dozens of programs including employment services for people with disabilities and Section 8 housing for low-income families. Environmental protection by the EPA would be cut 7.2%. A $492 million revolving fund to upgrade sewers, septic systems and storm water-run-off programs would go down the drain, posing major problems for local communities in Western Pennsylvania desperately in need of these repairs. Frigid winters paradoxically may become the norm as the path of the Gulf Stream shifts due to glacier melt caused by global warming. The Pentagon is now studying the impact of climate change on national security but I suppose they haven’t informed the White House.

Speaking of national security, what of the "discipline" placed on programs to benefit average Americans with a profligate $402 billion Pentagon budget? That’s $20 billion more than the already pumped up 2004 budget. Iraq and Afghanistan operations are mysteriously missing from the Bush budget. After the November election they may be found again. Just last month the Army, Air Force and Marine service chiefs told a Senate panel that operational funds will run out at the end of September and they can’t wait for a Congressional vote in January.

The Department of Energy $19 billion nuclear weapons program is not included in the $402 billion. Nor is the 10% increase for Homeland Security [orange alerts do pay off]. Interest payments for this part of the budget bring us to over half a trillion dollars and counting. That’s more than what our allies and all potential enemies combined spend. Ask yourself: how does spending $10 billion on an unreliable and unnecessary missile defense system add to our security? This pie-in-the-sky program is an attempt to control space and may spur a space arms race. Why doesn’t real down-to-earth security require clean water and air, decent health care and a good education for all? Obsolete, irrelevant, pork barrel weapons live on, providing subsidies for powerful members of Congress and their constituents. Let’s roll that barrel of money to local jobs and programs that will give us clean energy, safe water and sewer systems, infrastructure repairs for sewers, falling bridges or decent public transportation. And why spend $2.6 billion for a new nuclear attack submarine? Or build a new generation of nuclear weapons when we don’t know how to safely dispose of nuclear waste after years of trying. How can we demand that the non-proliferation of other nations while we’re adding them to an already enormous stockpile?

Then there’s a projected cost of hundreds of billions for development of new, more advanced fighter planes. Our present aircraft far outperform every other nation’s aircraft. Who cares about discipline, transparency or efficiency when it comes in the guise of "national security?" Who pays attention when the Pentagon admits that it’s unable to account for one to three trillion dollars of taxpayer funds? Just think how we need that money to protect Social Security or Medicare, paid for by workers in a separate than the budget paid for in income taxes.

"Support for our troops" slogans have a hollow ring when active duty personnel get raise of just 3.5% and lose their reimbursements for out-of-pocket expenses for private housing. Service families lose their economic security when loved ones are off fighting in a war that’s supposedly protecting our national security. And how does that affect morale? Ask yourself why Mr. Bush would add billions for unnecessary weapons while cutting health care programs for veterans. New casualties and aging veterans require them. Support our troops? Honor our veterans? How do we gain real security from fancy but irrelevant war toys? Or from the "realistic’ strategies of gamesters who’ve never experienced the hell of war. Aren’t these folks the ones who are naive in the extreme? Yet they call those who oppose them wimps, naive, not living in the world of ‘realpolitik.’

This obvious truth is one that politicians fear to discuss because of the political attacks they’d face. So candidates for office fall all over themselves to promise a "strong defense." Don’t they notice that in nation after nation over recent decades dictators have been toppled by nonviolent people power? Violent revolutions have not been so successful. A truly brave President should be willing to risk the cries of critics that they’re, impractical, and "soft" if they want to fund a search for real alternatives to war. Even those advocating diplomacy and international cooperation shrink from developing new methods of conflict prevention and resolution as a viable alternative to war. Only one candidate in the current presidential race has advocated a Department of Peace and his idea has been ignored by the press. ‘Realpolitik’ bullying and posturing, to say nothing of declaring war simply sow the seeds for the next war. But who will make the convincing arguments that war is counterproductive when nonviolent successes have been made invisible?

Finally we must resist the move by both Democrats and Republicans to target public programs for shortsighted privatization schemes. These create profit-making engines for companies by cutting wages and benefits for workers and by cutting back on services for families and local communities. You may ask how we can afford domestic programs in times of budgetary crises. Well, a major reason for the federal budget shortfalls is the sharp decrease in federal tax revenues. We pay just 15.8% of our gross domestic product in taxes. That’s the lowest level in 50 years. At the same time corporations and the very wealthy pay far less than they did. That was in a time of strong economic growth, by the way. Over the past 40 years tax receipts averaged 20.5%.

People forget that taxes were not always this unpopular. People could see the benefits they were receiving They promoted the common good over personal greed. The middle class was growing instead of shrinking. Now federal program cuts have left already strapped state and local governments to make up the difference or let their constituents do without needed services. States face a total of $40 billion in deficits next year. They’ve received little help from the federal government. Now the President, for example, wants them to pay a larger share of the Medicaid bill. State and local budget crises are close at hand. Decisions at the level get plenty of attention and become the focus of people’s anger. The way that federal policy decisions affect local budget problems is usually ignored by the local press.

These are ingredients for even more taxpayer revolts aimed at the wrong target, so frustration and a sense of futility sets in. Fewer people vote, thus turning over even more power to lobbyists, corporations and the rich. Their investments will fuel the economy, we’re told, and produce more jobs. With three million jobs lost since 2001 and millions more ‘discouraged workers’, it should be clear that this has not worked. The reasons are complex, but so far the results aren’t there.

Mr. Bush, with an election ahead, and a belated ‘recovery’ that’s limited to Wall Street, has promised 2.6 million new jobs will be created this year. They’ll be found next to the WMDs. At least the administration backed off from this unlikely goal within a few days. Corporations and the very rich may be thriving, but the trickledown pipeline is stopped up. Even workers who do find new jobs find they’re paid a third less than in their previous jobs and often end up without benefits. Senior citizens’ pensions and health benefits are also at risk or are already lost as a result of mergers and bankruptcies.

Besides injustice in the federal tax system, Pennsylvania’s state and local tax structures are the 8th most regressive in the union. Earn under $16,000 and your tax bill is 11.4% of income make over $301,000 and you pay just 3.5%. That gap has widened since 1989. Pennsylvania’s low-income workers’ pay 2.7% more than they paid in 1989 while the richest 1% pay just 0.5% more! This disparity also holds for middle-income workers.

We must refuse to accept lower paying jobs, disappearing benefits and fewer public services. People are beginning to wake up, but because this information is usually presented as isolated facts and not as connected to one another, many still buy the program. "It isn’t happening to me." Yet the Walmartization of supermarkets is underway under pressure of unfair competition from a company that fights unions, cheats their workers out of overtime and puts the burden of health care largely on government programs for the poor. That’s the future for many workers unless they fight back. As Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

That’s our job, to help unmask the lies and distortions of reality. Building democracy is not only for Iraqis. We need to revive democracy right here. Let’s begin by taking our message to candidates for office at all levels - then back it up with our votes. We really can have real security, common security, economic security, and health security, i.e., true national security, but only if we refuse to buy the program and make our voices heard in the halls of Congress, in the streets and with our neighbors and friends.

- Molly Rush