[CTRL] PALS Mail (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message -- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 1999 18:15:01 -0500 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: PALS Mail Screen 001 of 004 Record 0047 of 0373 General Magazine Catalog TRN Library: North Dakota State Univ. Location: LIBRARY does not own citation title Database: EXPANDED ACADEMIC INDEX Citation: Dollars Sense Jan-Feb 1999, 221, 8(2) Author: Bloch, Tobias Sheppard Title: The true scandal of American politics.(1999 omnibus budget bill) by Tobias Sheppard Bloch and Brendan Smith COPYRIGHT 1999 Dollars Sense In a single 15 minute vote, the 535 members of Congress passed a 40 pound, $500 billion, 4000 page bill that not one elected official had read in its entirety. The bill, the Omnibus Appropriations Act, negotiated behind closed doors by a handful of individuals representing Congressional leadership and the White House, is swollen with so much rotten pork and dirty back room deals that even veteran Washington pundits are holding their noses. Stuffed to the gills with election-year goodies at the expense of initiatives desperately needed by working America - health care reform, job training, a minimum wage increase - the Omnibus bill whistles corporate America's favorite tune. The bill teems with rebates for oil companies, extended tax breaks for millionaires who own foreign companies, and $50 million for "war and revolution insurance" for corporations that throw American workers out on the street and move their factories to unstable third world countries. Congressional leaders even remembered old friends, setting aside $2 million to start a Robert J. Dole Institute for Public Policy. Seeking consolation in the 100,000 new teachers that Clinton insisted on provides little comfort. The budget deal only pays for 30,000, while the other 70,000 are part of Clinton's education "initiative," with no money set aside. Due to its enormous size, equaling one-third of the entire federal budget, the Omnibus Appropriations Act contained many important programs. The funds included in this bill will ensure that roads are built, seniors get their medical prescription rebates, and family farms are saved. But that's the trick. In order to get controversial measures passed that could not survive in the light of day, the leadership coupled them with vital funding measures, and therefore ensured passage of their favorite corporate welfare programs and pork projects. Moreover, Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton took the opportunity to attach several pieces of legislation that had been voted down on the House floor, including $18 billion in funding for the IMF. While this may shock those with a refined sense of democratic process, Gingrich and Clinton couldn't be happier with the latest budget deal. Setting aside their occasional disagreements over infidelity and abortion, this marriage is based on philosophical agreement on most major issues, ranging from economics and trade to defense priorities. Our President and Speaker of the House come to the altar under a pro-business, pro-defense, pro-free trade canopy. Life at the bargaining table is marital bliss when parties agree on 90% of issues, with no chance of divorce anytime in the foreseeable future. Let's look at their latest pride-and-joy. Our illustrious couple added $9.1 billion to an already bloated $280 billion Pentagon budget, which represents the largest peacetime military spending increase since the days of Ronald Reagan's Cold War. Congressional leaders demanded $96 million in "drug-interdiction" funding to aid the Colombian government in purchasing six Black Hawk Helicopters to curtail Marxist guerrilla movements. The Republicans insisted on earmarking funding for their defense contractor friends, but refused to raise military pension benefits in order to help veterans desperately in need. They also added $1 billion to the useless $50 billion Star Wars program. Each of the last five attempts to shoot missiles out of the sky has failed, and the Department of Defense will tell you why. According to Gen. Henry Shelton, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "putting more money into [Ballistic Missile Defense] won't produce a product any sooner ... money will not help solve the engineering and integration challenges that are being faced." Worst of all, the leadership of both parties poured $18 billion of US taxpayers' funds down the International Monetary Fund (IMF) blackhole. The IMF has become the prime architect and enforcer of corporate globalism. While imposing a right-wing agenda on the developing world, the IMF has forced the majority of the world's economies into a descent through hell. The recent failures in South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand frighteningly emphasize the IMF's disastrous policy prescriptions, which force countries
[CTRL] PALS Mail (fwd)
-Caveat Lector- -- Forwarded message - Citation: Journal of Economic Issues Sep 1998, v32, n3, p759(13) Author: Olson, Paulette Title: Ending corporate welfare as we know it: an institutional analysis of the dual structure of welfare. by Paulette Olson and Dell Champlin COPYRIGHT 1998 Journal of Economic Issues-Association for Evolutionary Economics In 1996, after years of debate and the accumulation of a vast literature on poverty, economic dependency, and family structure, the U.S. government voted to "end welfare as we know it." The federal government officially withdrew the entitlement to cash assistance and imposed strict time limits on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), the replacement for Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) [Burtless 1997]. Federal regulations require all recipients to work within two years and limit all forms of assistance to 60 months. States are free to impose shorter time limits and more stringent work requirements as they see fit. While government assistance for individuals at both the federal and state levels is clearly in retreat, government assistance for the business sector appears to enjoy broad public support. Under a wide array of programs, the federal government assists business in the form of direct services, cash grants, subsidized credit, as well as through various tax credits and deductions. Plainly, the call to Wend welfare as we know it" did not apply to all recipients of government aid. Corporate welfare is estimated to cost the federal government between $170 and $200 billion each year [Collins 1996]. This figure far exceeds the amounts ever budgeted for individual welfare programs. The Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) program cost the federal government $11 billion in 1989. Even Medicaid, which benefits primarily the elderly, was budgeted at $30 billion. This is about half the amount lost to the federal government through tax credits and deductions given to corporations [Huff and Johnson 1993]. The irony of fiercely debating programs designed to provide basic food, shelter, and medical care for indigent individuals while dispersing billions to wealthy corporations has been remarked upon by a number of analysts. In 1983, Mimi Abramowitz pointed out that in the "narrow and compartmentalized view of the welfare state," only the poor receive aid [Huff and Johnson 1993, 442]. Corporations receive "economic incentives." Recently, corporate welfare has come under attack not only by those who object to the inequity of providing "assistance to the wealthy" while withdrawing "assistance to the needy," but also by those who object to government assistance in all forms [Bandow 1996]. Despite the political coalition supporting an end to corporate welfare, such efforts are unlikely to succeed as long as they are based on appeals to "equity" or to "economic efficiency." Attitudes toward welfare are deeply rooted in cultural myth, not in benefit/cost analysis. That is, individual welfare is perceived as an undeserved "hand out" that constitutes a drain on the public treasury. In contrast, corporate welfare serves the public interest by promoting economic growth [Gray 1996]. The purpose of this paper is to examine the dual structure of welfare. The first section reviews the dual structure of welfare policy in the United States. In the second part of the paper, welfare is analyzed in terms of the controlling cultural myths. Underlying the dual structure of welfare policy is a cultural dualism identified by many feminists in which activities associated with the "economy" attain a higher degree of status and legitimacy than activities associated with the "family" [Fraser 1989, 149-151; Jennings and Waller 1990, 627-629]. Within the framework of this dualism, assistance to corporations has a higher degree of status and legitimacy than assistance to individuals. So powerful is this dualism that it has undermined the powerful myth of laissez faire in which government assistance to business is viewed not only as illegitimate, but as counter-productive. Hierarchical dualisms endow one side of the dualism with higher status and legitimacy. In the case of welfare, the higher status and greater perceived value to society accorded to corporate welfare recipients have led to a greater sense of entitlement to public resources. This sense of entitlement reinforces and is reinforced by the racial, class, and gender dimensions of the welfare dualism. In the conclusion, we discuss the wider implications of the dual structure of welfare. The main point of the paper is to illustrate that corporate welfare not only wastes billions of dollars in tax revenues, but reinforces the growing bifurcation of our society into the privileged and non-privileged. The Dual Structure of Welfare Policy The myth of the dual
