And speaking of screwing the poor:

William Raspberry of the WashPost’s column is required reading. He’s talking about the same thing I addressed yesterday at the tail of my rant (or was I raving) about the moral values of the religious right: how the tax cuts are seemingly more important that the safety net for the less fortunate (or the more screwed).

Paul Krugman of the NY Times wrote a lengthy essay on this subject back in 2003 called “The Tax Cut Con.” The article’s premise was that the right’s plan is convince America that its tax burden is onerous and unfair, where, in reality, compared to other nations and compared to previous generations in America, it’s actually historically low. But the clever trick is that they’re teaching America that we are paying much too much in taxes, so we’re seeing cut after cut, even though they mainly benefit the wealthy. Remember the “Death Tax?” That entire tax rollback was a con. There has never been a documented case of a regular family farmer or small businessman losing his or her farm or business because of the estate tax. Yet, if you had listened to the rhetoric, you would have thought it was occurring weekly.

The next step in the right’s plan, once the revenues coming in are insufficient to support the “normal” level of services that the citizenry demand, is that painful cuts will have to be made. How about “reforming” the safety net for your children and grandchildren by eliminating the New Deal programs like Social Security and the Great Society programs like Medicare.

Sound familiar?

Here are some excerpts from Raspberry’s column:

Cutting Out the Poor
By William Raspberry, January 31, 2005, The Washington Post

… No matter how alarmed we may get over some particular setback, it's usually true that the sky really isn't falling.

Well something is coming down.

I've been talking to Peter Edelman, a Georgetown University law professor who is thoughtful, liberal, incredibly decent -- and alarmed over the national budget President Bush will shortly propose.

… "For virtually all of my adulthood," he said, "America has had a bipartisan agreement that we ought to provide some basic framework of programs and policies that provide a safety net, not just for the poor but for a large portion of the American people who need help to manage.

"There've been exceptions -- the first Reagan term with David Stockman, the brief ascendancy of Newt Gingrich -- but while we've argued about the specifics, the basic framework has been there.

"With this budget, the basic framework is being dismantled."

Before you dismiss it as partisan hyperbole, hear Edelman's specifics: The basic structure of Social Security is under attack (on the grounds that the program is in crisis, though most respected economists say it isn't). Pell Grants for college tuition are on the cutting block. So are Section 8 housing vouchers (which started under Richard Nixon) and food stamps. Programs that have offered some protection for people in the lower third of the economy are under threat of evisceration.

And the rationale for the attack is a budgetary crisis created by the gift of $1.8 trillion in tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans.

… It is important, says Edelman (who quit the Clinton administration in a protest against the push to radically downsize public assistance), not to look at this budget program by program but at the thoroughgoing reordering of the government's role. He sees it as a major advance of the goal articulated by the influential conservative Grover Norquist of shrinking government "to the size where you could drown it in a bathtub."

"We're talking about tens of billions of dollars in cuts, including many programs that, like nutrition, are in-kind income for people," Edelman said. "We're talking about a severe blow for millions of Americans who are working as hard as they possibly can but still need some help."

Well, why don't we just wait and see if things turn out as badly as some of us fear? And if they do, then let the government reenact some of the old social programs.

The lovely thing -- at least from the Norquist view -- is that there won't be much the radically downsized government could do about it. That darned fiscal crisis, you know.

Remember that the people who are enacting, or more correctly “de-enacting” these programs call themselves Christians, go to church every Sunday, yet are probably some of the most selfish, evil bastards to ever walk the face of the earth. Hey! That’s almost the definition of a conservative.

BTW, should anyone want to read Paul Krugman’s “Tax Cut Con” article, click the little envelope symbol at the bottom right of the post and send me an email and I’ll send it to you. It’ s in MS Word, quite lengthy, and absolutely fascinating.