‘I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor’

October 26, 2005

As expected, congressional Republicans were diligently crafting a plan to slash domestic spending that benefits those most in need of aid. It reminded me of an old quote that Bush would probably prefer to forget.

Republicans began targeting key programs for budget cuts yesterday, from student loans and health care to food stamps and foster care. […]

The House Ways and Means Committee today will begin drafting legislation that would save about $8 billion over five years, eight times the $1 billion target the panel was given in the spring. To do it, Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) would cut back federal aid to state child-support enforcement programs, limit federal payments to some foster care families, and cut welfare payments to the disabled.

Michele Baker, a custodian for the Orleans Parish School District, who weathered Katrina in her car, spent the aftermath in the Louisiana Superdome, and now has no job, said, “I can’t believe that some people in Washington think that, after a Category 5 hurricane, the solution is to unleash a Category 5 hurricane on working people.”

None of this comes as a terrible surprise, of course, but I can’t help but wonder where the president is on all of this. I know with some certainty, however, how candidate Bush approached issues like one.

In October 1999, Tom DeLay, Dick Armey, and other House GOP leaders were considering a measure to defer payment of the Earned Income Tax Credit to low-income workers. Bush, then the presidential front-runner, said, “I don’t think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.” (The comment prompted DeLay to say Bush “needs a little education on how Congress works.”)

The same month, Bush criticized his party again, accusing it of projecting pessimism, indifference, and “disdain for government.”

It leads me to wonder where Bush is now regarding this new round of the GOP’s war on people in poverty. Was Bush against balancing the budget on the backs of the poor before he was for it?

Here we go again. Billions of dollars into the pockets of the already wealthy who need it least through Republican tax cuts, and once again trying to get it back from those who have the least to give.

And nobody even mentions recinding those same tax cuts before slashing benefits to the poor? Shameful!!

  • This is a goddam joke. Where’s the marching in the f*cking streets? Every damn day something like this comes out. I can’t keep up. If one single legislative abomination such as this came out of the Clinton administration (yes, I’m going there again), it would have defined his presidency as repulsive and sadistic. But sh*t like this comes out every goddam day w/ Bush and people just don’t care anymore. It’s expected from him..it’s business as usual…and somehow that’s making it ok. Well it’s not! I’m so tired. So very tired. What is it going to take?

  • What do expect from the Republicans? In the ’90s, they funded a special audit of the poor people who claimed the earned income tax credit. Let’s make the poor people take a day off from work, drag them down to the IRS and make ’em justify their existence.

    We should campaign to publicize and strengthen the IRS rewards program. Turn in a Republican tax cheat and make 10% of the assessment.

    I made the symbolic gesture of turning in a phony Florida real estate development deal that Charlie Gargano, Bush pioneer, was involved in. I didn’t try and claim the reward but I should’ve have.

    Level the playing field.

  • This is shameful, and, sadly, par for the course. Can’t say the Republicans aren’t chivalrous…every time it comes to cutting domestic spending it’s always women and children first. What would have to happen before they would consider rolling back those obscene tax cuts to billionaires??? An alien invasion?

    I am so disgusted with these rightwing assholes spouting their “culture of life” bullshit and then showing their true colors when it comes to spending our money. What kind of chart do we have to draw to convince the poor and middle class people who vote for these thieves that they’re screwing themselves? How can they not understand that once elected these guys are going to do whatever the party leadership and the lobbyists tell them to do? I just don’t get it.

    I don’t know why there isn’t more of an uproar over this. I’ve said it before: sometimes I think the only thing that will satisfy me is a good old-fashioned march on Washington with torches and pitch forks. Who’s with me? I can leave right now!

    Is anybody reporting this story but you, CB?

  • Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons? Let the poor go there
    if they must! And if they should die then let them do it and decrease the
    surplus population! -Ebenezer Scrooge (Compassionate Conservative)
    How little things really seem to change!
    Perhaps GWB will get his own midnight visitation from three unearthly
    spectres if he keeps acting like he has. I wouldn’t be too surprised
    to hear of Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy
    paid George a visit one night to confront him on his heartless policies.

  • Methinks, Anthony, you should send your scenario to the good people over at Jib-Jab, perhaps they could do a holiday cartoon……

    The sad thing about the “ignorant masses” is that in many cases they simply WANT to be the ones getting rich so they think that the ReThugs
    are going to HELP them……sad but true…..

  • SRY, I’m with you, give me a pitchfork. I’ve tried everything else I could think of.

    I wasn’t kidding about reporting Bush pioneer, Charlie Gargano, to the IRS. I’m from NY and I am sick of the mobbed-up Mr. Gargano giving my money away. He is the vice chairman of the NY Port Authority and the head of the NYS economic development agency and spends billions virtually unchecked including your federal tax dollars. Charlie Gargano and former senator, Alphonse D’Amato really run NYS. If you want genuine gangsters from NY and not gangsters from Texas in the White House, vote for George Pataki in 2008.

    I found a phony real estate development deal online in Martin County Florida that involved a lot of the big crooks in Suffolk County Long Island NY including Gargano. What they did was buy and sell real estate back and forth to Charlie’s friend and business buddy, Mario Posillico, through the Conrnerstone Group. The lots were sold for anywhere from $15k to $170k. For example, one would be bought for $75k from Mario and sold back to Mario for $15k a year later. Money laundering 101. I know all of the characters involved from the $2 billion Southwest Sewer District scandal in Suffolk County in the late ’70s.

    A lot of people would turn in Republican tax cheats for a reward. The FBI was conducting a money laundering investigation in the Caribbean and would have gotten lots more help if people were paid the 10% reward.

    The problem is, and I have written about it here before, is that the IRS has been crippled by the Republicans. I didn’t file a couple of returns from a few years ago to see what would happen and nothing happened. I’m talking about the year 2000. I don’t owe money, just the reverse but the IRS doesn’t know it. The IRS sends notices once in awhile and that’s it. You can bet that all of the tax cheats know what is going on.

    The SEC should be going after money being laundered through the stock exchange but it too has been crippled. As documented by the NY Times, Charlie Gargano has been involved in numerous phony penny stock companies while serving the public. He was on the board of Eagle Building Technologies in April 2001 when Eagle supposedly bought, get this, 85% of an Italian company that manufactured high tech, bombproof doors.

    After 9/11, Eagle, with Gargano on the board, tried to swindle the federal government for $50m by claiming that it had cargo scanning equipment, mail sterilization equipment and money laundering software. All false. Even the SEC caught on to some of the story. But Gargano never disclosed if he cashed in more than $1m in stock options in the fall of 2001.

    Nice, huh? This is what Republicans did after 9/11. The problem is that some Democrats were involved too.

    Anthony M. D’Amato, Eagle’s former president, went to prison for stock fraud but no one else did. You have to laugh – D’Amato and his wife, Gabriella, attended the Governors Ball during the 2001 Bush inauguration after D’Amato and Eagle contributed more than $230k to the Republicans.

    Charlie Gargano invested NYS taxpayer money in Intelli-Check, another phony company set up to take advantage of 9/11. Intelli-Check went public in either late 2000 or early 2001. Joseph Perri, who has ties to organized crime, was an insider who made $2m from Intelli-Check stock. Marvin Lebowtiz, who I think owns Mailco and Mailmar, made $1.5m. Mailco is a mass mailing house. Who do you think could have used $1.5m in free mailing in 2000?

    A lot of money is being laundered through these publicly traded companies and not just the penny stock ones. Intelli-Check is traded on the American exchange.

    Two inside traders of Intelli-Check were Larry Darnall and Donald Baker who, I think, recently retired from the TVA – Golden Pond in Oak Ridge Tennessee. Just so happens that Bechtel Jacobs has a contract to clean up nuclear waste there. Brant Jones made $150k as an Eagle inside trader and I think he is the Brant Jones, Nuclear Safety Board, who prepared a report on safety at the Hanford nuclear facility.

    Check the Bechtel website and then go to Bechtel Jacobs. There is a list of subcontractors. For fun, pick out which ones are obviously on the government dole. How many engineering or any other consultants does Bechtel need to hire? Which consultants website doesn’t list the names of the consultants? Which ones have retired members of the military onboard?

    A lot of people don’t realize that after the big NASDQ stock swindle in the ’90s, the crooks had a lot of venture capital money to invest. 9/11 afforded the perfect opportunity to make money out of the public eye. Biometrics is one such industry. There are dozens of these companies that employ former members of the military and other government agencies like the FBI. Crossmatch Technologies is one. Ultra-Scan is another.

    How many different finger scanning systems do we need? How big are the Homeland Security and Defense budgets?

    I’d like to nail these motherf**kers to the wall but the government is so corrupt and weak that anyone honest gets stonewalled.

    Pass the pitchfork, please.

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