THE NATION
'Read My Smirk'
Sun Jun 29 17:11:30 2003
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'Read My Smirk'
06/27/2003 @ 6:40pm

http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6&pid=786


From Maine to California, it sucks to be governor. Fiscal 2003 for most states ends on Monday, and governors have pooled information about how they are handling another miserable year. So far 17 states have had to lay off employees. Twenty-two have drawn down their rainy day funds -- which peaked in the last of the Clinton years at $48.8 billion, but in this third bare-cupboard year of the Bush locusts have just $6.3 billion left. And 28 states have used across-the-board cuts in every department, from elementary school education to police to road maintenance. All this slashing and burning -- with its hiring freezes, lay offs, halting of building projects, throwing of poor women and children off of the Medicare rolls, and so on -- has let states wring an additional $14.5 billion out of already-wrung-dry budgets. At the same time, governors in 29 states recommended some $17.5 billion for 2004 in new taxes -- sales taxes, income taxes, "sin taxes," taxes at the gas pump, gaming taxes, hotel room taxes, nursing home taxes, and more.

The state legislatures have crunched their own numbers, and they agree with their governors that it's looking desperate. During these three lean years of Republican federal rule, the 50 states have had to close a cumulative $200 billion in budget gaps. And it's not getting better. With sketchy information in for next year's budgets from some 41 states, the budget gap in 2004 will be at least another $78.4 billion.

So, how do you like George Bush's "tax cut" now?

Did you know, by the way, that for 49 percent of Americans, the average Bush tax cut will be $19? As in less than $20?

Are you starting to get the picture? Let me spell it out for you:

1. The Bush Republicans just rammed through new gargantuan federal tax cuts -- the lion's share of which go to the wealthiest Americans and to tax-dodging U.S. corporations. PRICE TAG: $800 BILLION -- plus several billion more in reduced state tax revenues pegged to the federal rates.

(Two more factoids from that tax cut: People who earn more than a million dollars a year will collectively enjoy $90 billion in tax cuts; while some $25 billion in loopholes for corporate tax dodges like reincorporating on paper in Bermuda were protected by last-minute Republican maneuvers. There are many questionable giveaways in the tax bill -- but this is a whopping $115 billion in outsized portions for the wealthy, and in leniency for Bermuda patriots.)

2. The tax cuts were pushed at a time of, among other things, war. So far we've spent some $67 billion on our rapidly souring occupation of Iraq. (Click here to see the war's growing cost clocked by the second.) A conservative estimate for Bush's land war in the Middle East, by next year, would be $100 billion. For comparison, the 1991 Gulf War cost $61 billion -- or about $80 billion in today's dollars. But you may remember our allies for that war picked up 90 percent of the check; this time around, unless Moroccan monkeys are declared legal tender, we're on our own. PRICE TAG: $100 BILLION.

(The National Priorities Project has put together a thought- provoking two-pager that breaks that $100 billion down state-by- state, adjusts out all other taxes and examines just the bill to income tax payers -- i.e., private citizens. So citizens of California -- facing the worst of all the state budget crunches, with a $38.8 billion deficit over two years -- can scroll through and learn they're kicking in $10.2 billion for Iraq. Citizens of Maryland, wondering how to meet a $1 billion shortfall, are paying nearly twice that for Iraq. And so on.)

Still with me? It works out, very roughly, to $800 billion for tax cuts, and another $100 billion for war -- against about $278 billion for state budget shortfalls.

Now this is an inexact collection of comparisons, more impressionistic than scientific. But comparing priorities is more art than science anyway.

If it were up to me, I'd cancel the $115 billion in giveaways to Bermuda patriots and America's wealthiest 1 percent, and use it to shore up state budgets -- which would still force a lot of hard budget decisions, but would also probably prevent everything from layoffs in 17 states to taxes on beer. But team Bush has its own ghoulish priorities. "I hope a state goes bankrupt," says Grover Norquist, the White House's favorite Republican strategist. Nice, eh?
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