It's just Deja Vue

First, one must understand that the United States budget is the framing, the place holder for the pieces. In the budget all the conflicts and purposes become evident, because the spending of money is an inducement to action. How money is spent both reflects and creates the society we are. Now, I am not serving accountant's delight, a treatise on the details of the budget. I do want to bring to your attention the general nature of the budget, and some of the provisions just included and passed by the Republican Congress.
 

The first thing to notice is the immediate news: conservatives, in their joy over controlling the government, have chopped at least $10 billion out of Medicaid. They've cut billions more from other programs aimed at helping the poor, the distressed, the aged, veterans, children and anyone else not healthy, wealthy and wise (enough). I suppose this follows the inverted Calvinist philosophy that the unsucessful are not chosen by the gods, and they should definitely be made aware of that fact. We are perhaps fortunate that cheap Republicans didn't want to pay for indelible tattoes to mark unfortunates for life, thus saving another government expense.

The second thing to notice is the $106 billion tax cut Republicans gave their conservative friends and supporters. Those are the successful so, according to positive Calvinsim, they are the chosen few. Congress wants those people to know that they are the chosen ones, in advance of their eventual redemption and passage into Heaven. Indelible tatooes are fortunately not necessary for this group, as its members are given to tooting their own horns loudly and often, which is hard not to notice.

The third thing to notice is the under-the-table increases delivered to the military and its greatest supporters, the military-industrial complex. All sorts of funds will be spent building ships the Navy does not want and anti-missle systems that don't work, and installing equipment and facilities in places that don't need them for "homeland security." What all of these prodigious efforts have in common is funds will be paid to friends of the dominant party, in places that voted for the dominant party, and not otherwise. Conservatives believe their conservative homelands ("Red States") are best served by making them awash in Federal money. Blue States are left to fend for themselves. This is a further application of Calvinism, positive and negative, on a large, more general scale.
 

None of this is to be confused with the Spoils System, so proudly introduced by another Southerner, Andrew Jackson. Jackson, a Democrat, recognized that none of it had anything to do with gods; it was entirely the work of mortal men. It is the godly judgements that Republicans introduce into the proceedings which makes it all so different. Perhaps that is why they so strongly defend Rep Tom DeLay, who has travelled widely doing the Lord's work, using such funds as the (K street) gods may provide.
 

Beyond the short term, there are longer term pieces of interest. Anyone looking at a pie chart of the Federal budget cannot escape noticing four huge hunks which cover almost the entire area: The Military, Social Security, Medicare and The Debt. Less than 1/3 of the Federal government is represented in everything else. The pie chart doesn't show you that the total Federal budget far exceeds tax collections, but, in fact, it does. That means the piece called "The Debt" is increasing every year. It is increased every time the Republicans cut taxes for their friends. It is also increased by the interest payments due on the debt, because the Federal government has to borrow (at interest) what it doesn't collect in taxes. Those of us who attended the great Deficit Reduction Debate of 1992-1993 learned just how much interest was being paid, and how that cripples everything else the Federal government needs to do.
 

The Deficit is also increased by sub-rosa military spending in Iraq and elsewhere, when Congress approves "supplemental appropriations." I say "sub-rosa," because these appropriations are not officially in the budget, but are regularly approved as quietly as possible. They are "supplemental" supposedly because they represent unexpected or otherwise unbudgetable items. We are not to be confused by the fact that another $80+ billion supplemental appropriation for Iraq was pending while the Budget Resolution was being processed, and that it is expected another $80+ billion will be needed later this year or early next year for Iraq. Those expenses on foreign adventures are declared to be unforeseeable, so they aren't included in the regular budget. I think the reason they're unforeseeable is the Administration's unwillingess to admit that U.S. troops are likely to be in Iraq indefinitely. It's the on-going price of Empire; but, since the United States is not an Empire, the troops might come home at any time, which makes the budget for Iraq unforeseeable.
 

The Deficit would also be increased by the Bandit proposal to privatize Social Security. It is also being increased by BUSHCARE, which gives the drug companies a free hand in setting prices for R_x drugs at the expense of Medicare taxpayers.

Who pays for The Deficit? Fortunately, not us. The Japanese and Chinese have been conned into buying huge amounts of low-interest U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. The result is a huge pile of "booked" dollars in Tokyo and now an even bigger pile in Beijing, which can be spent for dollar-denominated stuff, like oil. The Federal deficit increases foreign competition for available crude oil, which raises the price of oil. That, in turn, puts pressure on the value of the dollar, which people living in North America see as inflation. That is, as more and more dollars are spent on oil, the value of the dollar declines from a foreigner's perspective, which is the same thing as saying the price of oil goes up. Domestically, that is seen as rising prices; i.e., inflation. The same mechanism works on all the other stuff that is traded internationally.

The United States has a huge deficit with China, which has been relieved only by Chinese willingness to buy Treasury bonds. This amounts to the Chinese (and other Asians) taking IOUs instead of cold hard cash for their goods and services. Put another way, it would be similar to your depositing your paycheck in a bank that had no deposit insurance, and damn little reserve on hand - just like the Good Ole Days of the 1920s, before the Crash. If the bank folds, you're out of luck. The United States government accuses Japan, Korea and China of mercantilism, but neglects to accuse them of being unlicensed pawn shops or loan sharks. The fact is, the United States is in the same position as workers of yore who had to buy everything at the company store.
 

So, with that background, we attend to the major fact of the U.S. budget: that almost everything is taken up in military, Social Security or Medicare spending. This should scare the living daylights out of Imperialists, and is surely one of the reasons for Bandit privatization of Social Security and Medicare. The reason it should scare Imperialists is that military spending could be forced to a halt by people's entitlements, or by foreign creditors. If the people demand payment on their entitlement IOUs, or if foreign creditors come down hard (sorry, foreclosure time!), the United States won't be able to pay for its foreign adventures.
 

Right now, domestic entitlement demands are not a severe problem. FICA tax collections exceed Social Security payments by about $150 billion annually. Medicare, however, is about to become a giant fiscal problem, as the Medicare funds will soon be unable to pay all the benefits. Either the Medicare tax will have to go up, or the benefits will go down, or the general fund will have to pony up the difference, or - you guessed it - foreign investors might accept more IOUs for cash to fund the program. Conservatives have always hated entitlement programs - anything that actually helps ordinary people - so now they are impelled to unload Social Security and Medicare. That's because there is only one way to pay the promised benefits: shrink the military.
 

Which gets us to the nub of the conservative consternation about entitlements. In the end, starting pretty soon, the United States will be forced to give up its Imperialism in exchange for funding domestic programs. The pressure to reduce the American military, hence the United States' international influence, will come from two sources: entitlements and foreign creditors. Of course, if the U.S. government can dump entitlements, then it can probably continue its militaristic policies.
 

So, that's the picture: what's at stake is the United States being the "world's sole superpower." Us geezers, demanding full payment on the Social Security and Medicare promised us, necessarily bring down the Empire. Moreover, American greed and excessive consumption have already passed control of the Federal budget into foreign hands. Oddly enough, its the anti-Communist conservatives who have done the most to undermine "the full faith and credit" of the United States. We are already past a time when anyone could seriously talk about "confronting" China. (This probably means that, sooner than we expected, Taiwan must fall.)
 

I know the foregoing is just a quick outline, and not at all clear. The Big Picture is this: in the budget, we already see the forces shaping our destiny. There is the military-industrial complex, and the foreign adventures of this Bandit President. There is the needs of the people: pensions, medical care and assistance at other times and places of need. Then, there is the lurking presence of foreign intervention by economic means. (The days of attacking Pearl Harbor are over. They'll just take it in pawn or buy it)
 

Should that make Americans ashamed of collecting their entitlements? Should we be willing to take pension cuts, as repeatedly proposed by the Bandit? Or, should we be wondering why more than 1500 soldiers have died in Iraq? And, just what is the United States doing with troops in Europe and Japan, and a lot of other places including Afghanistan?
 

The Soviet Union's last foreign escapade, before it collapsed, was in Afghanistan.