Debt? Look at the Profits! designed to both police the world and line their pockets, while priming the failing Keynesian capitalist pump. Bill Onasch argues that the "Great Budget Battle" has little to do with debt. And the
The single largest budget item, the ideological obsessions of the Republican right are leading many capitalists to shift their military, was left untouched. In fact, the support to more 'moderate' candidates. Including Democratic incumbent Bill Clinton $265 b. military appropriations bill approved by Congress and signed by the benefit of the ruling Clinton, gave the Pentagon more than the class, at the expense of the President had originally requested. working class [...]
"We are near agreement on sweeping Are there any real welfare reform," continued Clinton in his differences between address to the nation. But he neglected to Clinton and the state the costs in human misery. Republicans? One pundit
"I challenge every state to give all suggests that Clinton parents the right to choose which public reflects the thinking of the school their children attend, and let teachers Fortune 500 [the country's form new schools with a charter they can largest corporations] while keep only if they do a good job." The [Republican demagogue] President neglected to clarify that this was a Newt Gringrich's reference to a coming ruling class project supporters reflect the designed to steal funds from public interests of strip-mall education and transfer them to private shopping center] enterprise. Clinton's reference to the privatization of public education signals The Republican right another assault on working people in the 'Contract On America interests of capital. crowd is more ideological,
On pensions reform, Clinton was at his while Clinton and the New ruling class and gentle best. "I challenge Democrats are more every business that can possibly afford it to pragmatic. Which puts provide pensions for their employees." Few, moderate Republican if any volunteers for this "challenge" are challengers to Clinton such The political minions of the as Bob Dole in a difficult On the environment, Clinton also extended an open hand to the corporate Top ruling circles seem elite: "To businesses, we are saying: If you increasingly disaffected can find a cheaper more efficient way than from the Republican Right. government regulations to meet tough A recent Business Week pollution standards, then do it as long as editorial complained: "The you do it right." Environmental rhetoric Republicans have stuffed aside, Clinton's last "temporary spending their temporary spending measure," for the first time in years, led a and debt limit-extension significant layer of environmental groups to bills with extraneous - but protest the hidden measures contained politically charged -therein to gut major portions of existing example, a death-row rider environmental legislation and funding.
[amendment] that limits the
But on immigration, President Clinton ability of convicts to appea showed the clenched fist: "We are their sentences. Not much increasing border patrols by 50%, he said.
to do with budgets and The following week the government deficits there... The major announced a record number of arrests of players - President Clinton, Mexican immigrants. In a single day, some Speaker Gingrich, Senator 2,500 were arrested crossing the Mexican border. Scapegoating the poor will
Both the Republicancontrolled Congress and the Democratic White House consider that a balanced budget is a sacred, self-evident prescription for economic consensus about this holy principle among bourgeois economists. Balanced budgets - where the least as much as it spends - have been rare in the 20th century. And there has only been one two-year under president Andrew Jackson's term - when Washington was debt-free • The neo-liberals claim that a state deficit must be balanced, just as every family continually manages its own expenditure in function of its income. But this family budget doesn't hold water. Few people worry about spending more than they earn in any given year. If we did exercise such restraint, we wouldn't be customers for buying houses, cars, or sending our kids to college. Debt essential to both families and government. As long as debts can be properly serviced they contribute to a profitable economy |...] The fact of the matter is that the Great Budget Battle has little to do with debt. It has a lot more to do with redistributing wealth are not far from a deal. It's time for politicos to start negotiating in earnest. Stop acting, and get off the stage." The ruling class has definite practical objectives in Washington. They want to shift more of the tax burden from themselves to the working class. They seek to weaken the "safety net" to keep workers in line They want more deregulation and privatization. And they want a stable currency and a strong bond market. All this is much more important to them than death-row appeals, trimester [late] abortions, or prayer in the It is of course futile to call on politicos to stop acting bosses wouldn't get very far if they frankly stated their subservience to Big Business. The Comeback Kid [Clinton] has, in the past, occasionally stumbled over his lines but he seems to be a good bet to keep his role another season. He will probably get the nod from the show's principa has already been blessed by the labor bureaucracy, who greeted him at the AFL-CIO [trade union confederation convention with chants of "Four More Source: Bulletin in Defense of Marxism #130, January/February 1996 International Viewpoint n° 276 27
* USA its very nature to cut deeper into the social fabric of American life in order to maximize profit
Every cut, every budgetary minus, in health care, welfare, education, environmental protection, and the myriad of other social services that American workers have fought for and won in past decades, is a direct plus, a direct grant to the ruling rich whose domination or control of government has one purpose, to defend and advance the interests of capital against all comers from the U.S. working class and their allies, to the oppressed of the world who suffer direct U.S. military intervention or indirect methods of maintaining their neo-colonies with the help of their local patrons.
incomprehensible international currency rates of exchange.
The largest source of "profits" however, is the combined revenue the federal, state and local governments collect in the form of taxes from American working people. It is fight over the redistribution of this income from us to them, that is at the heart of the budget battle.
The fact that there are some differences between the mega-corporations, financial institutions, and their political ruling class leaders, is what generates the "heat" and occasional excess in some of the debates. In the end, however, the booty is shared, more or less in proportion to the relative strength of the contending ruling class tactions.
There are no defenders of the interests of the working class in this arena. The working class, lacking its own political party, is