George Bush's Class War Budget

[Itsthetruth]

CounterPunch
March 16, 2005

Making the Rich Richer, But Robbing the Rest of Us
Bush's Class War Budget
By ALAN MAASS

As A high school student in Pawtucket, R.I., Monica Teixeira de Susa was told not to bother applying to Brown University--because Brown didn't admit students from working-class Shea High School. Thanks to a federal program called Upward Bound, which helps low-income students get into college, Monica went to Brown, and later to law school.

But if George W. Bush gets his way, there won't be any other students like Monica. Because there won't be any more Upward Bound.

According to the New York Times, programs that help the poor account for close to half of the cuts in the Bush budget. "It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends," wrote New York Times columnist Paul Krugman. "Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action."

DESPITE THE scale of the budget cuts, they're the tip of the iceberg--and the Bush administration pulled a fast one to hide just how hard they'll hit in the years to come.

To the Bush administration and its cheerleaders at the Wall Street Journal, "restraint" means making workers pay. We have to expose the Bush budget for what it really is--another offensive in a one-sided class war.

http://www.counterpunch.org/maass03162005.html