By Max J. Castro
Seldom
have President George W. Bush’s priorities been cast in such stark
relief in the space of a single week. But last week the President:
(a) sought an extra $42 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and (b) threatened to veto $35 billion in additional money for
children’s health care.
The
additional $42 billion the President wants for the military would
cover less than three months of war spending; the extra $35 billion
he opposes would provide health insurance through the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to an additional 4
million American children for five years.
The Defense Department’s new funding request would bring spending for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to about $190 billion this year, the highest annual total ever. And that is only if there are no more requests before the year is over. Earlier in the year, the Congress voted nearly $142 billion to cover the cost of war through the year plus an additional $5 billion specifically for armored vehicles. The new request means that war spending will cost 15 percent more this year than what was projected just a few months ago.
The
new request brings total spending for war since Sept. 11, 2001 to
$800 billion. What has that $1 trillion bought except death,
destruction, and a damaged reputation?
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
Seldom
have President George W. Bush’s priorities been cast in such stark
relief in the space of a single week. But last week the President:
(a) sought an extra $42 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and (b) threatened to veto $35 billion in additional money for
children’s health care.
The
additional $42 billion the President wants for the military would
cover less than three months of war spending; the extra $35 billion
he opposes would provide health insurance through the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to an additional 4
million American children for five years.
The
Defense Department’s new funding request would bring spending for
fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan to about $190 billion this year, the
highest annual total ever. And that is only if there are no more
requests before the year is over. Earlier in the year, the Congress
voted nearly $142 billion to cover the cost of war through the year
plus an additional $5 billion specifically for armored vehicles. The
new request means that war spending will cost 15 percent more this
year than what was projected just a few months ago.
The
new request brings total spending for war since Sept. 11, 2001 to
$800 billion. What has that $1 trillion bought except death,
destruction, and a damaged reputation?
And
what has the $40 million spent on the SCHIP program since 1997
bought? It has bought ten-years-worth of health insurance for about
6.6 million children a year.
In
threatening to veto the expansion of SCHIP, Bush once again shows
that he is willing to sacrifice the welfare of the most vulnerable in
our society on the altar of a hard-core ideological commitment to a
harsh capitalism undiluted by concerns for human life or social
justice. In doing so, Bush is not only bucking nearly the whole
establishment, from the AARP to the AMA, but also taking on
influential conservatives in his own party, including Iowa Senator
Charles Grassley and Utah Senator Orrin Hatch.
But
Bush is not completely alone in his hard-line stance. A clear
majority of Republican members in the House of Representatives -- 145
of them -- voted against the bipartisan compromise SCHIP bill that
Bush is promising to strike down. These are the same hard-core
Republicans that have supported Bush on every issue, from the ruinous
Iraq war to the excesses of the “war on terror.”
The
actions of this gang of 145 GOP members of Congress show that today’s
warped priorities -- a trillion for the war machine, peanuts for
human needs -- are not only the Bush administration’s priorities
but the priorities of the majority of the Republican Party. Such
priorities have been in evidence again and again all across the
country, most recently in the state of Florida, where Republicans in
charge of the state legislature have perpetrated savage cuts against
programs that serve the mentally handicapped and other vulnerable
populations.
This time may be different in at least one way, however. In joining the President to deny health insurance to millions of children, Republican diehards in Congress may be showing the American public far too visibly what they, the members of the leading faction in the party, really stand for. In so doing they may be -- as Washington Post columnist David S. Broder has argued -- “following Bush over a [political] cliff.”
For the sake of basic decency and justice, let’s hope for a long fall and a hard landing.
