Bushwhacked_ Life in George W. Bush's America Large Print - Molly Ivins [129]
We have already covered the weaseling and underfunding on unemployment: his 2002 budget cut $541 million (10 percent) from job-training programs, and his 2003 budget proposes a $476 million cut (9 percent) from 2002.
His 2001 promise to review and reform the military is deader than an armadillo on I-35. The Los Angeles Times reported, “He seems unwilling to invest the time or political capital required to force radical change on the Pentagon.”
In a refreshing reversal, there’s a little-noted instance of switch and bait. In August 2002 Bush met with the Quecreek Nine, the miners whose rescue from a Pennsylvania coal mine collapse had captivated the nation in July. It was a great photo op. Except in January 2001, Bush’s administration had started cutting the mine safety budget, halted regulatory improvements, and reduced enforcement of safety standards. Last year, forty-two workers died in U.S. coal mines, up for the third straight year. The Department of Labor has halted work on more than a dozen mine safety regulations, all made during the Clinton administration. In February 2002 Bush proposed cutting the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s overall budget and slashing money for safety enforcement. But hey, the president was really glad the nine miners made it out alive.
Now, this one’s a doozy. In his 2002 speech Bush said, “A good job should lead to security in retirement. I ask Congress to enact new safeguards for 401(k) and pension plans.” The six most fatal words in the language are rapidly becoming “The Bush administration has a plan . . .” The Bush plan allows companies to switch from traditional fixed-benefit retirement to what’s called the cash-balance plan. It saves corporations millions a year, in the case of huge companies as much as $100 million. Under fixed-benefit plans, retirement is based on the employee’s salary and years of work at the company. This gives older workers a chance to rack up benefits. Under cash-balance plans, older workers can lose up to 50 percent of their pensions. When companies started switching to cash-balance plans in the late nineties, the Association for the Advancement of Retired People, the Pension Rights Center, the AFL-CIO, and other groups set up a mighty holler. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission received more than eight hundred age-discrimination complaints. As a result, the IRS stopped approving these conversions in 1999. The Bush rules not only permit the conversions but also give cash-balance plans a tax advantage, as well as protection from age-discrimination lawsuits. It’s the perfect Bush plan: they get to screw workers and get a tax break, and nobody can sue.
There is absolutely nothing he has promised about the environment that can be trusted, but there is one particularly touching item in the Bush tax plan that would triple the size of the tax loophole allowing business owners to write off the purchase of large SUVs. A business gets no break for buying a car but does get an $87,135 deduction for buying a Hummer H1.
We have already reviewed the Superfund situation, but even a specific promise in 2001 to accelerate the cleanup of toxic brownfields turns out to mean 20 percent less than full funding for that purpose. On the other hand, with Bush’s environmental initiatives, we get particularly creative names. The Clean Skies Act will make the air dirtier, the Healthy Forest initiative is a giveaway to the timber companies, and most charming of all, we have Climate VISION. That stands for “voluntary innovative sector initiatives: Options Now,” and is this administration’s response to global warming—voluntary, optional controls on the production of greenhouse gases. It’s a vision, all right. We assume Rove is to be congratulated.
The greatest bait and switch of the administration’s record thus far was the aforementioned substitution of Saddam Hussein for Osama bin Laden. As we went to war, 42 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for the attacks on September 11, and 55 percent believed he was providing