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What Reagan Started, Bush Is Finishing
By David Martin
10/26/05 "ICH"
-- -- In recent weeks, every morning’s newspaper
seems to carry another headline documenting the accelerating
tailspin of George Bush’s administration into disastrous fiasco.
Political pundits may attribute the ongoing self-immolation of
George Bush to the general ineptitude of the Mayberry Machiavellis
with whom he has surrounded himself.
But there is another, more historically correct explanation for the
current presidential unraveling: the disaster that is George Bush is
the inevitable culmination of the “revolution” wrought by Ronald
Reagan.
The Great Charlatan swept into office proclaiming that government
was the problem. If only it got out of the way, the energy,
creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit of the private sector would
be unleashed and a golden economic age would dawn. A rising tide of
affluence would lift all boats, and we would all sail off into a
rosy sunset.
Now after eight years of the Gipper, four years of Bush I, eight
years of Republican Lite under Clinton, and five years of Shrub, we
see the truth of the Reagan Revolution. The gradual withering away
of the welfare and regulatory state has not unleashed the American
entrepreneurial spirit. Rather, it has set loose the predatory greed
of the 19th century robber barons, the class cannibalism of Social
Darwinism, and the winner-take-all rapacity of laissez faire
capitalism.
The bright and shining “morning in America” that Reagan touted has
turned into a cold, gray dusk as the sun rapidly sets on the
American dream. In the 25 years since Reagan was sworn into office,
the middle class is shrinking and the gap between wealthy and poor
is reaching Grand Canyon proportions. During this period the average
after-tax income of the lowest fifth of Americans has increased by
5%, the middle fifth by 15%, and the top fifth by 48%. The income of
the top 1% of Americans, in contrast, has more than doubled, growing
from $298,900 to $631,700, an increase of 111%.1
The trickle down promised by supply-side economists has diminished
to a slow drip. The tax policies of George Bush have only
exacerbated this problem. The combined effect of his tax cuts has
been to reduce federal tax revenue to its lowest level as a share of
the economy since 1950.2 The inevitable result is the return of
Reaganesque tax deficits that Bill Clinton worked so hard to erase.
George Bush is mortgaging our future, and the Chinese hold the note.
Reagan came into office promising to shrink government to keep it
from stifling private initiative. He and his successors may not have
been too successful in shrinking the size of the government, but
they have certainly magnified its ineptitude. The government that
once put a man on the moon now cannot deliver ice to the Gulf Coast.
The American military that conducted a multi-front war to defeat the
formidable powers of Germany and Japan cannot subdue shadowy car
bombers in Iraq or the remnants of the Taliban in Afghanistan. A
military logistical system that was able to supply its armies across
two oceans somehow can’t coordinate the delivery of armored Humvees
to troops stationed in Iraq or supply them with up to date bullet
proof vests.
Privatization was another of Reagan’s sacred tenets. The theory was
that privatizing services once provided by government would result
in greater efficiencies at lower costs. The Iraq occupation was to
be a textbook case for the miracle of privatization. First the
American forces destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure (except for the
oil industry), then the job of rebuilding was turned over to large,
private, well-connected construction firms.
Two years after the American invasion the Iraqis have only
intermittent electrical service and inadequate water supplies. But
the construction firms did prove efficient in at least one area:
ripping off the American taxpayer. Billions of dollars have
disappeared into the black hole of Iraq reconstruction, and contract
administrators can only shrug and mumble about difficult
circumstances.
The Bush administration may have fumbled relief efforts in the
immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But it was well prepared
to apply the lessons of Iraq reconstruction to the rebuilding of the
Gulf Coast. The Katrina clean up could have been one huge WPA
project to help alleviate the widespread poverty so cruelly exposed
by the monster storm. Instead George Bush rescinded wage and
environmental regulations and turned the Gulf Coast into a free fire
zone for crony capitalism.
The same well-connected, underperforming firms from Iraq were given
the same no-bid, no oversight contracts in Louisiana and
Mississippi. As a result, illegal immigrants are being paid at below
minimum wage rates to do the work that should be done by displaced
residents at Davis-Bacon wage rates. One can anticipate the
importation of workers from Bangladesh, Nepal, and Pakistan as New
Orleans displacees are shuttled from one government trailer park to
another.
Politicians and their supporters love to wax romantic about the
legacy they leave behind. Here’s the Reagan/Bush legacy: failed
wars, support of terrorists, environmental degradation, the income
distribution of a banana republic, a credit rating a third world
country would be ashamed of, falling health standards, the
disappearance of guaranteed retirement pensions, and corporate
malfeasance on an unprecedented scale.
George Bush loves to end his speeches with a request for God to
bless the United States of America. What he really needs to ask is
for God to save us.
David Martin -
<damrtn48@ntplx.net>
Notes
1 Figures taken from Congressional Budget Office report, Historical
Effective Federal Tax Rates: 1979 to 2002, March 2005.
2 Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Tax Returns, A
Comprehensive Assessment of the Bush Administration’s Record on
Cutting Taxes, April 23, 2004.
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