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08-15-05, 10:01 AM
With the public distracted, George W. Bush is building a big government -- of the right
BY ALLAN LICHTMAN
Allan Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and author of "The Keys to the White House."
August 7, 2005
Like a master pickpocket, George W. Bush distracts the American people with one hand while reaching into their pockets with the other. The distraction comes through the flash and bombast of explosive social issues like abortion, gay rights, public displays of religion, end-of-life decisions and creationism, on which Bush has delivered little beyond rhetoric. The pilfering comes through initiatives that take from working- and middle-class Americans and give to Bush's corporate backers, to whom he has delivered the goods big time.
This summer, with the public preoccupied over whether Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, Congress passed an energy bill with $14.5 billion in tax breaks, most of which will flow to companies like Exxon, which last year made about $25 billion in after-tax profits, enough to float a small country.
Just before Congress broke for its summer recess, the administration also won ratification of a free-trade agreement with Central American nations that made it easier for companies to outsource jobs and investments, and that bypasses protections for workers and the environment. And it steered through Congress, even after negotiating down the final cost, the most expensive transportation bill in American history, laden with pork-barrel benefits for nearly every member's state or district.
Last spring, with Americans riveted on the drama of the Terri Schiavo case, the Republican leadership steered through Congress a bankruptcy bill crafted by lobbyists for the credit card industry. According to authorities on the financial industry, credit companies stand to reap profits of several billion dollars from the law.
And let's not forget the prescription drug benefit for seniors of two years ago that failed to restrain prices, handing big drug companies $139 billion in windfall profits and leaving seniors to navigate a gallingly complex system with gaps in coverage.
The administration defends its corporate-friendly bills as nurturing a rapidly growing modern economy that has reduced unemployment to a historically low 5 percent. It claims to be assuring continuing energy supplies through a free-market approach to energy, opening foreign markets to American goods and services, reducing the costs of credit, promoting personal responsibility and helping seniors cope with rising prescription drug costs.
But what all of this really amounts to is a political revolution in the United States, creating a form of conservative big government that promotes not the general interests of ordinary Americans but the special interests of big corporations. This creates a sharply upward redistribution of wealth and power that threatens long-term prosperity. Job growth has been well below predictions during Bush's term, for instance, and many analysts predict hard times for the economy in years ahead.
This revolution also is making government costlier and less fair, stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making, and opening fissures between the wealthy and other Americans.
Consider the energy bill. The president himself says it will have little impact on rising gas prices. Virtually all analysts agree that, aside from raising production levels of the fuel additive ethanol, it does little to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
The bankruptcy law will make it harder for many millions of Americas to cope with debts arising through no fault of their own - from illness, injury, divorce or unemployment - by forcing them into stringent repayment plans, usually reserved for deadbeats, which empower creditors to take their homes, cars and other assets.
Among the questionable projects being funded in the transportation bill is Sen. John McCain's favorite: $2.3 million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California. "I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say," said McCain, who was one of only four senators to vote against the law.
Liberals traditionally use their version of big government to reform society from the bottom up, funding welfare benefits, regulating business, empowering labor and advancing opportunities for minorities. Today's conservatives begin from the top down, subsidizing business and expanding its global reach, shielding corporations while punishing individuals for bad behavior, enforcing moral codes, and backing powerful military and police forces.
For decades Republicans complained of Democrats who used the federal budget to create cadres of dependent voters: recipients of welfare and Social Security, members of federal employee unions and beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. Now under George W. Bush, the GOP has created a new form of the leviathan state with payouts to major corporate interests that bankroll the Republican Party.
Federal spending statistics show just how far conservative Republicans have strayed from their once touted ideal of frugal, limited government. During Bush's first four years, federal spending grew by about 16 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, compared with about 10 percent during Bill Clinton's eight years in office. During Bush's first term, the share of our gross domestic product accounted for by the federal government rose from 18.4 percent to 19.8 percent, compared with a decline from 22.2 percent to 18.4 percent during Clinton's two terms.
Beyond the way the government redistributes wealth, Republican big government also has a social agenda that has vastly expanded the federal government's authority to intrude into our private lives. The recently renewed Patriot Act, for example, authorizes the feds to look over our shoulders when we browse libraries or surf the Internet. And it gives law enforcement officials broad authority to secretly search our property or bug our private conversations.
Although justified by the need to fight terrorism, these restrictions are part of a value system that aggressively pursues policies against the empowerment of individuals. The president and his allies have enacted legislation that makes it more difficult for individuals to band together in class actions that challenge wrongdoing by corporations. They are on the verge of passing a bill that shields even negligent gun makers from lawsuits. And they are pursuing sharp limitations on jury awards in tort cases, even though data gathered by such authorities as the National Center for States Courts, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Congressional Budget Office deflate the myth of an economically wasteful "litigation explosion."
It is important that Americans arrive at a consensus that protects a woman's right to safe and legal abortions or the rights of gays and lesbians to live free of invidious discrimination. But at a time when Democrats often feed at the same corporate trough as Republicans and don't seem to have compelling alternatives, it is increasingly urgent that the public focus on what the broader agenda of big government conservatism is doing to their lives.
The confirmation hearings on the new Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts, might be a good place to begin this process. Senators should carefully probe his views on the purposes, powers and limits of government, including privacy rights, police powers, corporate autonomy, individual access to the courts, civil rights and liberties, and the government's capacity to protect our environment, health and safety. We sorely need a serious national conversation on all of these questions.
Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday, Inc.
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oplic074373670aug07,0,2606425.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com
BY ALLAN LICHTMAN
Allan Lichtman is a professor of history at American University and author of "The Keys to the White House."
August 7, 2005
Like a master pickpocket, George W. Bush distracts the American people with one hand while reaching into their pockets with the other. The distraction comes through the flash and bombast of explosive social issues like abortion, gay rights, public displays of religion, end-of-life decisions and creationism, on which Bush has delivered little beyond rhetoric. The pilfering comes through initiatives that take from working- and middle-class Americans and give to Bush's corporate backers, to whom he has delivered the goods big time.
This summer, with the public preoccupied over whether Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, Congress passed an energy bill with $14.5 billion in tax breaks, most of which will flow to companies like Exxon, which last year made about $25 billion in after-tax profits, enough to float a small country.
Just before Congress broke for its summer recess, the administration also won ratification of a free-trade agreement with Central American nations that made it easier for companies to outsource jobs and investments, and that bypasses protections for workers and the environment. And it steered through Congress, even after negotiating down the final cost, the most expensive transportation bill in American history, laden with pork-barrel benefits for nearly every member's state or district.
Last spring, with Americans riveted on the drama of the Terri Schiavo case, the Republican leadership steered through Congress a bankruptcy bill crafted by lobbyists for the credit card industry. According to authorities on the financial industry, credit companies stand to reap profits of several billion dollars from the law.
And let's not forget the prescription drug benefit for seniors of two years ago that failed to restrain prices, handing big drug companies $139 billion in windfall profits and leaving seniors to navigate a gallingly complex system with gaps in coverage.
The administration defends its corporate-friendly bills as nurturing a rapidly growing modern economy that has reduced unemployment to a historically low 5 percent. It claims to be assuring continuing energy supplies through a free-market approach to energy, opening foreign markets to American goods and services, reducing the costs of credit, promoting personal responsibility and helping seniors cope with rising prescription drug costs.
But what all of this really amounts to is a political revolution in the United States, creating a form of conservative big government that promotes not the general interests of ordinary Americans but the special interests of big corporations. This creates a sharply upward redistribution of wealth and power that threatens long-term prosperity. Job growth has been well below predictions during Bush's term, for instance, and many analysts predict hard times for the economy in years ahead.
This revolution also is making government costlier and less fair, stifling individual freedom and democratic decision-making, and opening fissures between the wealthy and other Americans.
Consider the energy bill. The president himself says it will have little impact on rising gas prices. Virtually all analysts agree that, aside from raising production levels of the fuel additive ethanol, it does little to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
The bankruptcy law will make it harder for many millions of Americas to cope with debts arising through no fault of their own - from illness, injury, divorce or unemployment - by forcing them into stringent repayment plans, usually reserved for deadbeats, which empower creditors to take their homes, cars and other assets.
Among the questionable projects being funded in the transportation bill is Sen. John McCain's favorite: $2.3 million for landscaping on the Ronald Reagan Freeway in California. "I wonder what Ronald Reagan would say," said McCain, who was one of only four senators to vote against the law.
Liberals traditionally use their version of big government to reform society from the bottom up, funding welfare benefits, regulating business, empowering labor and advancing opportunities for minorities. Today's conservatives begin from the top down, subsidizing business and expanding its global reach, shielding corporations while punishing individuals for bad behavior, enforcing moral codes, and backing powerful military and police forces.
For decades Republicans complained of Democrats who used the federal budget to create cadres of dependent voters: recipients of welfare and Social Security, members of federal employee unions and beneficiaries of affirmative action programs. Now under George W. Bush, the GOP has created a new form of the leviathan state with payouts to major corporate interests that bankroll the Republican Party.
Federal spending statistics show just how far conservative Republicans have strayed from their once touted ideal of frugal, limited government. During Bush's first four years, federal spending grew by about 16 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, compared with about 10 percent during Bill Clinton's eight years in office. During Bush's first term, the share of our gross domestic product accounted for by the federal government rose from 18.4 percent to 19.8 percent, compared with a decline from 22.2 percent to 18.4 percent during Clinton's two terms.
Beyond the way the government redistributes wealth, Republican big government also has a social agenda that has vastly expanded the federal government's authority to intrude into our private lives. The recently renewed Patriot Act, for example, authorizes the feds to look over our shoulders when we browse libraries or surf the Internet. And it gives law enforcement officials broad authority to secretly search our property or bug our private conversations.
Although justified by the need to fight terrorism, these restrictions are part of a value system that aggressively pursues policies against the empowerment of individuals. The president and his allies have enacted legislation that makes it more difficult for individuals to band together in class actions that challenge wrongdoing by corporations. They are on the verge of passing a bill that shields even negligent gun makers from lawsuits. And they are pursuing sharp limitations on jury awards in tort cases, even though data gathered by such authorities as the National Center for States Courts, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Congressional Budget Office deflate the myth of an economically wasteful "litigation explosion."
It is important that Americans arrive at a consensus that protects a woman's right to safe and legal abortions or the rights of gays and lesbians to live free of invidious discrimination. But at a time when Democrats often feed at the same corporate trough as Republicans and don't seem to have compelling alternatives, it is increasingly urgent that the public focus on what the broader agenda of big government conservatism is doing to their lives.
The confirmation hearings on the new Supreme Court nominee, John G. Roberts, might be a good place to begin this process. Senators should carefully probe his views on the purposes, powers and limits of government, including privacy rights, police powers, corporate autonomy, individual access to the courts, civil rights and liberties, and the government's capacity to protect our environment, health and safety. We sorely need a serious national conversation on all of these questions.
Copyright (c) 2005, Newsday, Inc.
--------------------
This article originally appeared at:
http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-oplic074373670aug07,0,2606425.story?coll=ny-viewpoints-headlines
Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com