deficit hides a rightwing agenda to cut welfare/social programs/ EPA

[papau]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1140115,00.html

Back to the future

Bush's willingness to run up a mammoth deficit may hide - as it did for Reagan - a rightwing agenda to cut welfare, writes William Keegan

Tuesday February 3, 2004

<snip> ...under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, the US seemed perfectly happy to run large budget deficits whether or not the economy was in recession. The reason was that they were determined to introduce their "supply side" tax cuts, and to raise defence spending in the name of finally seeing off the Soviets and their "evil empire." In this last regard, Reagan and his colleagues were spectacularly successful.

The Kremlin realised the game was up. It simply could not compete with US levels of defence spending, especially when it was becoming increasingly obvious that Soviet-style communism had failed to bring economic nirvana to the people. But the supply side theory that tax cuts would somehow create their own budget balancing revenue proved not to be worth the paper napkin on which Arthur Laffer reportedly tried to demonstrate the thesis.

What some supply side theorists did have in mind however - and it is all there in the memoirs of the Reagan administration, most notably those of one time budget director David Stockman - was that a budget deficit swollen by defence spending and tax cuts would assist a rightwing agenda aimed at cutting down on welfare spending. It looks as though we may be experiencing a similar phenomenon again. When the US treasury secretary, John Snow, reportedly said last week that the president was "serious about the deficit" he was being wonderfully Delphic. <snip>

Unfortunately, I fear the US will probably experience a repetition of the l980s, and that the budget deficit will be used as an excuse to cut back on all sorts of vital public assistance to the poor. Anecdotal reports indicate that this process has already begun.

[Faygo Kid]

1. "Starve the Beast:" Bush strategy from day one

I have believed from the beginning that GWB came into office with four priorities:
1. Fulfill all PNAC/neocon dreams about Iraq and the Middle East.
2. Effect a permanent redistribution of wealth (and hence control)to the top 1%, and make the rest of us wholly dependent on their magnanimity.
3. "Starve the Beast" - that's here - destroy the New Deal and the social safety net by eliminating any possibility of funding them (tax cuts, huge deficits).
4. Destroy the opposition by putting in place structural electoral changes that can't be overturned (among other strategies).
I see nothing to change my mind. He just needs a second term, and the requisite Supreme Court appointments, to make his dreams reality.

[Tempest]

2. Hide? This was out in the open a long time ago

The rightwing agenda was exposed back when Grover Norquist made his "starve the size of government down to the size where you could drown it in a bathtub" statement.

It's just that the sheeple don't want to know the truth.

They'd rather fill the airwaves with stories of Jackson's overrated tit.

[DenverDem]

3. Whether US defense spending bloat caused the Kremlin to give up

on communism, or whether Raygun's timing was exquisite and communism merely collapsed under its own weight of corruption and totalitarian unsustainability over the will of The People is open for debate.

The obvious same strategy being used by rethugs now is unquestionable.

[Lefty48197]

5. Actually, Lech Walesa and the Pope brought down the iron curtain

please don't let the Republicans re-write this very important part of history.

[Lefty48197]

4. It's the same old right wing ploy

Destroy from within. Or, eliminate "liberal" government programs, by bankrupting the government.