Capitalism and Budget "Justice"

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”

-- Martin Luther King

It used to be that Republican presidents’ budgets presented to Democratic congresses were “Dead on Arrival.” Then much the same happened to the budgets Clinton provided his Republican congresses. Now Bush has introduced a budget to a congress of his own party that has little chance of passing. Its portions on entitlement programs cut projected increases in Medicare and Medicaid, yet the budget keeps tax cuts benefiting the wealthy. Democrats are hammering away at the injustice of it all, creating a hard environment for blue-state Republicans who face tough re-election fights, and whose votes Bush needs (but won’t get) to pass his budget.

So how does Bush square his budget with “compassionate conservatism”? According to Budget Director Josh Bolten, the tax cuts make sense because government’s most urgent economic task remains to keep the economy growing. Bolten notes that when the economy slows down and people are laid off, it isn’t the rich who suffer. It’s the working class. Tax cuts fuel economic growth; tax increases slow down growth and increase unemployment.

But what about the people who suffer from the healthcare cuts, how are they helped by such tax policies? Here, the budget contains some interesting details. A big reason to cut spending on existing programs is to provide a $28 billion tax cut to middle income taxpayers clobbered by an alternative minimum tax that should be hitting only the wealthy. And one proposed Medicare spending cut asks people with higher incomes to pay more of their doctor's visit costs.

Such proposals do, in King’s words, seem to bend the moral arc toward justice, not away from it.