Budgets and spending: Congress’ never-ending song-and-dance

Bill Knight column for Mon., Tues. or Wed, 4-9, 10 or 11

    Like most parents, I hear the opening of the ’90s “Song That Doesn’t End” and I want to launder Shari Lewis’ sock puppet Lamb Chop at super-high temps. And like many taxpayers, I read approved spending measures and proposed federal budgets and I hope Congressional leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell BECOME sock puppets.
    On March 23, President Trump signed a $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill, which grouped together various appropriations bills, for Fiscal Year 2018 to fund the government through Sept. 30
    The spending bill meant the government didn’t shut down and Congress has six months before it has to do it again – just before the November election. However, as Stan Collender warned in Forbes, “the House and Senate (are) not planning to adopt a congressional budget resolution this year, increasingly partisan congressional politics [exist] heading into the election, and [the] president promised never to sign another massive spending bill.”
    Meanwhile, like a zombie Pinocchio, Trump’s proposed budget for FY 2019, released in February, lurches through Capitol Hill hallways, seeking brains or souls. Federal budgets project revenues and expenditures (here, for Oct. 1, 2018 - Sept. 30, 2019) and reflect presidents’ priorities.
    Trump’s budget refrain has the melodic grace of chain saws: $1.7 trillion in cuts to programs helping the middle class and poorer Americans (oddly close to the $1.5 trillion tax-reform handout to the 1 percent he signed in December).
    U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) said, “After giving massive tax cuts to billionaires, President Trump’s disgraceful budget slashes Medicaid, Medicare, nutrition assistance, heating assistance and attempts yet again to repeal the Affordable Care Act. This Robin-Hood-in-reverse agenda is the last thing American families need.”
    Here’s a dozen targeted areas. It would: cut $1.5 trillion in “non-defense discretionary” spending over a decade – a 40 percent reduction to government programs outside the Defense Department; cut the Centers for Disease Control $27 billion over 10 years; end student loan forgiveness; cut $21 billion from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families; cut the EPA by 1/4; privatize the Space Station; take funds from Transportation to start funding infrastructure; reduce food assistance by $214 billion; cut Education by $3 billion (while “finding” $1 billion for private schools); drop home-heating help; abolish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting; and — surprise! — trim Social Security.
    The proposed Social Security decreases include $64 billion from Social Security Disability Insurance, $89 billion (less than 2017) for administrative funding, $500 billion from Medicare, capping benefits for retirees who live with other SSI recipients, and ’changing the structure of Medicaid into either a per-capita cap or block grant” to states, according to Max Richtman of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare, “allowing them to impose work requirements.”
    Sound familiar?
    Three years ago this week, I wrote about the Republican-dominated House passing its version of a federal budget, slashing $5.4 trillion in spending, including Social Security. It also would have privatized Medicare; convert Medicaid and food stamps into block grants; cut funds for nursing homes, Head Start and college grants.
    So: What puppets oppose Social Security, which provides critical support for retirees, pays modest benefits, helps people of all ages, and is still needed? According to a 2013 study by Northwestern’s Benjamin Page and Larry Seawright and Princeton’s Larry Bartels, it’s the 1 percent. Economist Jamie Galbraith adds, “Big Money has been gunning for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for decades — since the beginning of Social Security. The motives are partly financial: As one scholar once put it to me, the payroll tax is the ‘Mississippi of cash flows.’ Anything that diverts part of it into private funds and insurance premiums is a meal ticket for the elite.”
    To dismantle Social Security, etc., Congressional Republicans have resorted to misleading or false claims such as saying Social Security is bankrupt while its Trust Fund holds $2.8 trillion in assets: legally binding debt from the U.S. Treasury. Another — accusations of fraud — is exaggerated, said author William Greider, commenting, “The Government Accounting Office and the Social Security’s own Inspector General have both found that fraud in this program is less than 1 percent.”
    Nevertheless, 36 months later, Trump, McConnell and Ryan — today’s Lamb Chop, Hush Puppy and Charlie Horse — mouth their obsession: saving money on the backs of regular Americans to enrich campaign contributors and fellow 1 percenters.