Farmers of Big Horn County and across America are familiar with tough choices in tough times.
When weather turns bad and crops fail, farmers must decide where to cut expenses, when to borrow and how to wisely invest available resources in order to maximize future harvest.
In the endless debate about our national budget, the same wisdom should apply. Everyone agrees spending cuts are necessary—but which ones? To answer wisely, we should look at economics, not politics. Which investments and which cuts are best for all citizens and future generations?
However dire the budget, most farmers would prioritize investing in seed. Our national obligation to invest in children's health; education is no different. And it's a good investment. Studies show a return of 400-700% for every dollar spent on early childhood education. See this link: http://developingchild.harvard.edu/library/multimedia/interactive_features/five-numbers/
Many in Congress still hold to decreasing the tax burden on the wealthy as an investment in "job creators." The theory goes that the more money wealthier people can keep for themselves, the more jobs they will create to spread the wealth to the rest of us. Does this work for our children's future?
To answer that question we need a little foray into tax history, one that politicians and media pundits avoid. Our nation prospered under Eisenhower's 90% tax bracket for the wealthiest. Under Reagan, this tax averaged 50%. G. W. Bush cut taxes for the wealthiest to 35% and funded two wars off of the budget. He took office with a $236 billion budget surplus, remember? His tenure ended with a $415 billion deficit, not counting $150 billion borrowed from social security. And Obama? Like Republicans, he's not serious about the deficit.
The nation's wealthiest 400 now own as much of the nation's wealth as half of the entire population: over 150 million of us. Said another way, for every dollar each of the less-wealthy half of us own, the average one of the wealthiest 400 in America have half a million. When they complain that the tax burden is shifted toward the wealthy--i.e., the biggest percentage of tax income comes from the wealthiest--the reason is obvious: They make more money than the rest of us put together.
And one of the biggest cash cows, the Pentagon, is funded without question-- over $500 billion and increasing. A range of groups, including Cato Institute, Taxpayers for Common Sense and the Project for Defense Alternatives have detailed nearly $1 trillion in cuts that could be made to the Pentagon budget in the next ten years, yet congressional leaders in both parties including Tea Party activists are refusing to tackle Pentagon spending.
Instead they blame the poor. They protect tax breaks for the wealthy and then make a ruckus about a tiny fraction of our budget: WIC, Headstart, and other support for low income children. This way of doing almost nothing for the deficit is deceptive. And it's unwise to create new budget crises in millions of homes across America. Here's where the national budget debate needs our nation's moral foundation.
The Bible has more to say about money and "greed, which is idolatry (St. Paul, Col 3.5)," than any other moral issue. This is the very issue by which Jesus separates the nations destined for heaven from nations destined for hell, in Matthew 25: "Depart from me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire… for I was hungry, and you gave me nothing to eat. I was thirsty, and you gave me nothing to drink. I was naked, and you did not clothe me. I was an alien and you did not welcome me. I was sick and in prison, and you did not visit me. … Inasmuch as you did not do it for the least of these my brethren, you did not do it for me."
The converse is promised in the book of Isaiah: "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and …you will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail (58:10).
Last year our farm spent more than it earned. But I'm still buying seed for the west field. Now that the soil's a little healthier, its time to grow some pasture. In a few years, some sheep, goats, or cows will have something good to munch, and the grandkids can have 4H projects. I'm investing in the future, for my children's children. Do our leaders have courage to do the same?
"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death." - Dr. Martin Luther King. April 4 was the 43rd anniversary of his assassination.
The following is the portion cut for the Big Horn County News "Back 40" column
All over the media are the personal attack words, "Obama had to be dragged kicking and screaming to a real discussion on government spending." Personal attacks are not even appropriate in our American civilization when they are legitimate. But this language, all over the media backed funded by Murdoch, the Koch brothers, etc., reeks of hypocrisy. These Republicans, and for that matter, Democrats as well, don't want to tackle the American wealth accumulating with the wealthiest 1%. So they don't talk about the Pentagon and associated excessive profits in the military/industrial complex Eisenhower warned about. Virtually every economic sector has its hands deep in taxpayer pockets, profits deeply connected to our defense, military and national security apparatus.
Those who now say "everything is on the table" will be keeping smoke and mirrors on the table too again. The mantra of blaming the poor is totally ludicrous. They continue putting out the propaganda that all we have to do to turn around the economy is stop spending taxpayer money on the most vulnerable of socie
Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, is waging radical class warfare and ideological privatization schemes and selling it as a debt reduction plan. His newly released FY12 budget proposal, The Path to Prosperity, ought to have the subtitle: "A Windfall For the Already Prosperous."
America's richest 1 percent are getting about $1.5 trillion richer each year. Representative Ryan's tea party inspired budget numbers claim debt reduction. But look what happens. From start to finish, this budget is a smoke screen. Indeed, though Ryan's central claim is that his proposal will cut government spending by $5.8 trillion over the next decade, Joel Packer of the Commitee for Education Funding points out the reality: "For the overall budget over ten years it cuts outlays by $5.8 trillion below CBO baseline but it also cuts revenues by $4.2 trillion below CBO baseline, thus reducing the deficit over ten years by $1.65 trillion." So the richest 1 percent are getting richer each year by almost the amount his budget reduces the federal deficit in ten years.
Yet under the guise of debt reduction, the chairman of the House Budget Committee's budget proposal would take from the already poor, give to the already rich and attempt to achieve debt reduction not by cutting real costs, but by privatizing entitlement programs and shifting costs from the wealthy and corporations to struggling states, seniors, disabled, sick and low-income Americans. And the additional revenues necessary for serious debt reduction is glaringly absent, with proposals that would actually decrease tax-revenue from those most able to pay.
Studies also show that the richest 5 percent hold almost 64 percent of our wealth while and the bottom 80 percent of scrape by on just 12.8 percent of the pie.
Unmentioned in Congress, looming before us all are the two biggie budget busters left off the discretionary table: big business bailouts, especially banking and energy, and the taxpayer funded profits from our wars in the Middle East. The tax system stays in place. The nation's greedy corporations and insatiable wealthy are fattening themselves on the working poor. There's no trickle down. It's the opposite; the rich have been sucking the economic lifeblood from the middle class and poor for decades.
The Bush-Obama budget continues giving millionaires huge tax breaks while seniors and hard-working families pay more for health care and get less coverage. It still helps Wall Street-run health insurance companies make record-breaking profits and pay their CEOs outrageous sums to deny people the care they paid for and need. See Bloomberg.com news April 6:
The GOP's budget simply goes farther than the Democrats breaking America's most basic promise: That if you work hard and play by the rules, you can care for your family and retire with peace of mind. See Huffington Post on the Republican Budget Plan: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ethan-rome/republican-budget-plan-de_b_845256.html
As a country, we face difficult financial choices, but one thing that should not be on the table is to abandon the poor and vulnerable while subsidizing Wall Street and allowing more military spending. Should such big budget items really be considered non-discretionary?
Many Democrats and most Republicans, as well as the Koch brothers' funded Tea Party have it dangerously wrong. It seems the Christian faith is a schizophrenic practice for them. They uphold the adopted principle of greed for corporate and personal profits above civic responsibility to the most vulnerable of our society. But to me, my Republican-leaning parents, and many of my friends in Big Horn County, our faith connects with all of life, including politics.
At a time when billionaires are getting massive tax cuts and Wall Street profits are sky high, balancing the budget on the backs of those most vulnerable in America is simply wrong.
The poor are — once again — under attack, this time in the House budget bill, H.R. 1. The budget proposes cuts in the WIC program (which supports women, infants and children), in international food and health aid (18 million people would be immediately cut off from a much-needed food stream, and 4 million would lose access to malaria medicine) and in programs that aid farmers in underdeveloped countries. Food stamps are also being attacked, in the twisted "Welfare Reform 2011" bill. (There are other egregious maneuvers in H.R. 1, but I'm sticking to those related to food.)
These supposedly deficit-reducing cuts — they'd barely make a dent — will quite literally cause more people to starve to death, go to bed hungry or live more miserably than are doing so now. And: The bill would increase defense spending.
For the following, see : The Bush Budget Deficit Death Spiral, by Robert Freeman, NYT
Lenders talk about a debtor's death spiral. It occurs when borrowers get so far in over their heads they begin borrowing money just to cover the interest payments on past borrowings. The borrowers have to do this to keep the lending flowing but they can no longer plausibly pay down the principal. As new debt compounds on old, bankruptcy becomes imminent. Further lending is foolhardy. Foreclosure is only a matter of time.
The U.S. is starting to look like it is entering just such a death spiral. It is foretold not simply by the large and growing deficits, nor by the fact that their carrying costs will rise quickly as interest rates rise. Rather, it is the fact that these trends are becoming irreversible, a structural part of the U.S. economy. This and information on actual deficits and surpluses quoted in the printed column is available:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1022-26.htm
157,000 kids up to age 5, who rely on Head Start for nutrition, education and other services could be cut (1. "House Bill Means Fewer Children in Head Start, Less Help for Students to Attend College, Less Job Training, and Less Funding for Clean Water," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, March 1, 2011 http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3405)
A big source of the problem is those who cultivate the creep of ignorance across our land. 60 minutes had a special segment last week on corporate tax rates. They cited several huge previously American corporations that have spurned US citizenship and opted out of the country. They abandoned their country. They settled down in a foreign country, where corporate profits are taxed at much lower rates. Since the wealthiest CEO's have kept their residency in America, they do not have the heavy tax rates on large personal vested wealth common in other nations. All this is legal. Is it moral?
Left out is the vital information that America, unlike virtually every other modern democracy, lacks a federal property tax on individually held vested wealth. Since paper profits are a huge portion of corporate profits, our nation has held corporations to an income tax rate not unlike that for individuals. Other nations, recognizing the declarable wealth holdings of corporations distributed to stock holders, tax the net worth of individuals.
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David Graber
Hardin, MT 59034
www.greenwoodfarmmt.org
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