REAGAN'S REACTIONARY BUDGET
Carpenter, Luther
We are now in the middle of the battle over the 1984 budget. The president is browbeating us to "stay the course"; we have to derail him. Our job is not only to restore the services he would cut...
...The need for both is obvious, as direct creators of jobs and as prerequisites for maintaining and creating jobs in manufacturing and trade...
...They are such a dangerous abdication of the powers of Congress that senatorial conservatives will probably block them...
...It's important to make these amounts large enough to permit expansion of municipal hiring as well as to prevent the firings and job attrition that cities and states are planning to meet their own budget deficits—deficits caused by depression and by previous cuts in federal aid...
...THE EDITORS 135 Our real need is to block the third year of Reagan's tax cut...
...Let 'em take to the streets" is the unmistakable message here...
...We should also be angry at the effort, for the third year in a row, to shut down the Legal Services Corporation...
...In addition, we have to block any increases in Social Security tax rates, and all his efforts to shred the tax structure with new loopholes...
...The Reaganites' control of the executive branch means that they will sabotage programs wherever possible...
...Reagan's supporters have tried to create the impression that this budget is "realistic" and "reasonable...
...One is that it must be covered by borrowing, and that involves paying interest...
...TO SUMMARIZE: We should try to save some $76 billion by canceling the third year of the tax cut...
...Therefore the Democrats should stop repeating this nonsense...
...even Reagan's standby proposal for an income tax surcharge confesses that his tax cuts damaged the government without generating growth...
...IN AMENDING THIS BUDGET, we'll have to concentrate on those public expenditures that we can really increase...
...The Conference of Mayors stopped short of demanding the full rebuilding of cities, including restoring abandoned housing and public housing, but we should raise this issue again...
...The Conference of Mayors asked for $5 billion for the Community Development Block Grant program and $10 billion for rebuilding streets, bridges, and water and sewer lines...
...This comes to some $11,000 more than our original goal...
...By the time you read this, we will have discovered still more enormities hidden in the fine print...
...Such a deficit won't "crowd out" productive investment, because corporations won't invest while more than 30 percent of their productive capacity is idle...
...The flip side of the vision—military supremacy—may also derive from Reagan's rosecolored memories: an America that doesn't have to relate to other countries as equals...
...If poor and marginal-income people still persist foolishly in trying to get ahead, they will run into another cut (which the budget disguises as an increase...
...Simply blocking this year's cuts won't be enough...
...Instead, our first priority must be to get extra funds to jurisdictions that the Reaganites don't controlstate and local governments and entitlement programs...
...To actualize these fantasies, the Administration continues to destroy the capacity of the federal government to meet human needs and stimulate balanced growth...
...Reagan has created the deficit with his tax cuts, expanded it with his military expenditures, then whipped up the chorus of moaning financiers...
...To gauge their obsessiveness, just look at Anne Gorsuch's refusal to spend money that Congress appropriated to clean up toxic wastes...
...Those who do persist will get more money, if they go to more expensive (that is, private) colleges...
...The mayors' package also included $2 billion in special financial assistance to cities with unemployment rates above 6 percent...
...Most of the outcry over the deficit is spurious, manufactured by the Administration to conceal its assault on the American people...
...The Democratic leadership's proposal could supplement the mayors' package...
...Like its predecessors, this budget is part of a grand design to build a Hollywood set of the 1920s: a triumphant plutocratic class, a harassed work force grateful for what it is allowed to get, and an underclass whose existence is a grim warning to the rest of us...
...There is the attack on several nutrition programs, including school lunches...
...Public transportation, Food Stamps, Medicaid —the list goes on and on...
...In the first account of this proposal, jobs were restricted to federal buildings and parks, and the amounts were small...
...And we certainly can't be satisfied with the Democratic leadership's even more modest proposal for public-service jobs...
...Many entitlement programs, such as AFDC and Food Stamps, are administered by state and local governments and could easily be expanded to alleviate hardship and increase purchasing power...
...The second is the Keynesian multiplier effect, which is a reason for having a large deficit in a stagnant economy...
...and use this money to restore funds and increase aid to state and local governments and entitlement programs...
...Restoring what the Administration has cut will only begin to address the inhumanity of the budget...
...There is the proposal to end AFDC payments when a child reaches 16...
...The increment will help us to improve the quality of the magazine and to extend its reach...
...Another scandalous gap in an entitlement program is the fact that only 4 out of every 10 unemployed workers now receive unemployment benefits...
...It is—but only if you compare it with the loony fantasies that had been floating around the White House, such as taxing unemployment benefits or eliminating corporate income taxes...
...But a deficit of $189 billion or even $231 billion isn't inherently unreasonable when 12 million people are officially unemployed, and millions more discouraged from trying to find work...
...it can't substitute for it...
...It is especially important to set national minima for payments to individuals under these programs, since many states pay very little in AFDC, and to try to restore the working poor to their rolls...
...In the infighting, we will also have to keep a close watch on the details of tax loopholes, program eligibilities, and formulas for distributing funds, to try to get this money to the depressed areas and victimized people that need it the most...
...We should combine these funds and make unemployment rates and AFDC rates part of the criteria for allocating revenuesharing, to concentrate the effect on the hardest-hit areas...
...In turn, we are supposed to appease the financiers with new socialservice cuts and new taxes (levied, of course, mainly on working people...
...Big concession...
...136 YOU WILL HAVE NOTICED that I have not used the size of the federal deficit as a factor in making these recommendations...
...Previous cuts already have crippled state and local governments and injured people...
...Even the Administration predicts an average unemployment rate of 10.1 percent for fiscal 1984...
...If the deficit finally does provoke a Keynesian revival of the economy, then taxes will also revive, which will then cut the deficit so that "crowding out" won't occur...
...Our job is not only to restore the services he would cut but to demand economic development, jobs, and the satisfaction of human needs...
...Malnutrition is rising, old industrial areas continue to decay, and people who used educational facilities and Food Stamps to rise above poverty have been shoved back...
...This is an extremely moderate proposal, perhaps too moderate...
...Add to that the savings from blocking the third year of the tax cut—some $76 billion, according to the Conference of Mayors —and there will be a sizable amount of money to transfer back to useful spending...
...There must be a requirement to hire minority workers in these programs...
...Dellums estimated that his alternate military budget would have saved $50 billion in fiscal 1983...
...Sure, states will be allowed to continue benefits for a child in secondary or trade school—if they can find the money...
...So I've continued to use the December 1982 figure...
...As my father used to say, "Praise God for small mercies...
...The job-creating effect of the federal budget depends as much on what (and where) federal money is spent (especially if it's spent on civilian jobs instead of on defense) as on the size of the deficit...
...cut at least $50 billion from the military...
...Since most cities qualify for special financial assistance, a separate fund makes little sense...
...This year's proposals include tuition tax credits and an IRA for educational expenses...
...There are plenty of specific new horrors in this budget...
...This should be possible...
...There are two real reasons for concerning ourselves with the size of the deficit...
...The "emergency urban recovery" package put forth by the Conference of Mayors provides a good starting point...
...Yet even this point mustn't be emphasized too much...
...From the standpoint of reducing unemployment or giving ordinary people a chance to get ahead and social services when they need them, the budget is ridiculous...
...At best, it will get us back to a budget like Carter's last one—hardly a radical document...
...Dissent Fund Drive We are pleased to announce that the final tally for the biannual Dissent Fund Drive, now completed, is $51,312...
...Next, we need to scale down the military budget...
...military personnel...
...Liberals have preferred categorical grants that restricted funds to particular purposes, but ths Reaganites just will refuse to pass along the funds from categorical grants administered by executive agencies...
...it would save more in fiscal 1984 because the big expansions of arms procurement are just beginning to show up in the budget...
...If Reagan really wanted to aid education (instead of just giving a break to the wealthy and the middle class), an equivalent amount in direct assistance to schools would be more effective...
...And it continues to transfer money from social spending to military overkill...
...We thank our friends...
...they're just contributing to Reagan's invocation of magic numbers...
...He drafted an alternate military budget last year, HR 6696, which he plans to resubmit...
...On the revenue side, we have the new horror of the standby taxes to resist...
...Such proposals are pretty moderate...
...Since most military expenditures are personnel costs, Dellums proposed a 5 percent reduction in all U.S...
...It reduces progressive taxes and increases regressive ones, shifting the burden ever more from the property-owning to the working population...
...Congressman Ronald V. Dellums has shown us how to do it...
...Totalling $31.5 billion, it includes $7.5 billion in general revenue-sharing...
...Reagan doesn't find it unreasonable—as long as we don't use the deficit to finance human needs...
...It's good for those schools, and it reduces the numbers who can try to get ahead, thus cutting down the competition for good jobs...
...In January 1983, unemployment declined by 500,000—but discouraged workers accounted for more than 300,000 of the decline...
...For this reason, we may not be able to expand OSHA or many other valuable programs...
...The "recovery" that Reagan keeps prophesying won't begin to undo the damage even if it does occur...
...Has anyone at the White House even glanced at teenage and young adult unemployment...
...it will only benefit the fortunate...
...Dellums's budget would eliminate most new weapons systems, including the MX and cruise missiles, the B-1 bomber, and new nuclear carriers...
...Low-income students will have to lay out more money before qualifying for college tuition assistance...
...Why should poor people know their rights...
Vol. 30 • April 1983 • No. 2
