Tag: budget

Biden’s Budget Proposal a Reminder of the Democrats’ Failure

by Party for Socialism and Liberation, March 9, 2023

Today’s [March 9] budget proposal that the Biden administration is attempting to present as a bold vision for social change is in fact, little more than a bitter reminder of the Democrats’ failure over the last two years to implement their own agenda of progressive reform. Despite having a clear popular mandate, when it was actually possible to enact the measures included in Biden’s draft budget, the Democratic Party leadership came up woefully short.

To become law, a budget must pass both houses of Congress, and there is no prospect that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives will vote in favor of these proposals. Up until the midterm election, however, the Democrats were in the relatively rare position of controlling the White House, the House of Representatives, and the Senate. Their failure in these critical years to pass major reforms has reduced their current proposals to little more than rhetorical statements of principles.

Much of what is in Biden’s budget proposal would indeed bring some welcome relief to working people. The draft includes provisions to restore the enhanced child tax credit that sends monthly checks to parents, reduce drug prices, increase subsidies to cover the cost of college tuition, and establish universal pre-K. It would also fund an expansion in the number of children who receive free school meals, and mandate paid family and medical leave up to 12 weeks.

It should also be noted that there are highly reactionary, anti-worker parts of Biden’s proposal as well. The draft allocates a record $835 billion for the Pentagon, reflecting the administration’s commitment to its new Cold War policy that is bringing the world to the edge of catastrophe. The White House also brags in a press release that it “includes funding to put 100,000 additional police officers on the street.”

But the aspects of the Biden administration’s agenda that are positive – which are rooted not in genuine concern for the people but fear that capitalist rule would be destabilized in the absence of concessions – can all be vetoed by the Republican majority in the House. This is a ridiculous state of affairs considering that most of these proposals are recycled from the “Build Back Better” social program expansion that Biden spent much of his presidency up to this point pushing.

Because they were unwilling to eliminate the anti-democratic “filibuster” rule in the Senate, Biden had to stake everything on a single bill passed as part of a budget procedure that is immune to the filibuster’s 60-vote requirement. But in order to succeed, he needed to force Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, the two most right-wing Democratic Senators, to go along with it. Rather than bringing to bear the pressure that can be generated by the most powerful political office on the planet, President Biden simply offered concessions and praised Manchin in public, emphasizing what great friends they had been for many years.

This, unsurprisingly, amounted to nothing, and Manchin humiliated Biden by announcing on Fox News that he was withdrawing from negotiations with the White House.

[Article can be read in its entirety at liberationnews.org/psl-editorial-bidens-budget-proposal-a-reminder-of-the-democrats-failure. To contact the Party of Socialism and Liberation in CT, email [email protected].]

Opinion: Vote “Yes” to Move Military Money to New Haven

Kim Stoner, NH Independent, Oct. 20, 2020

I mailed my absentee ballot today, and I almost missed it. I was so focused on the people I wanted to vote for—and certain people I wanted to vote against—that I almost missed the block of text on the right-hand side of the ballot:

“Shall Congress prepare for health and climate crises by transferring funds from the military budget to cities for human needs, jobs and an environmentally sustainable economy?”

Fortunately, I noticed it as I was folding my ballot to stuff it inside the inner envelope, stopped, and energetically marked the oval for “Yes!” I testified to the Board of Alders last June, asking them to put this on the ballot, and they unanimously agreed. I am a scientist, so I like facts. My testimony to the alders was a compilation of facts:

  • Direct military spending in the fiscal year ending in September 2020 will amount to $746 billion — more than $2 billion per day, more than $1 million per minute.
  • The U.S. military is the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world. Since the beginning of the “War on Terror” in 2001, the U.S. military has emitted 1.2 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases. This is more than double the annual greenhouse gas emissions of all the automobiles in the U.S.
  • Green manufacturing—the kind of work that would employ the technical skills used in defense manufacturing in Connecticut—creates 28 percent more jobs per dollar spent than defense spending.
  • Retrofitting buildings for energy efficiency —work we desperately need to do in New Haven, with our older and less energy efficient buildings—would create twice as many jobs per dollar spent as defense spending, and would immediately benefit the people of New Haven in reducing our energy bills and improving our health and comfort.
  • Our endless wars all over the world since 2001 have killed over 800,000 people and have not added to the peace or security of our country.

Why do we have such a huge military—bigger than those of the next 10 countries combined? The events of the last six months have shown that our status as a military superpower cannot keep us in New Haven safe from disease, from economic collapse, from gun violence, and from our divisions along racial and economic lines. Neither can it protect our country from the wildfires, floods, and hurricanes that seem never to end—and that are only a foretaste of the climate disasters to come.

We can’t solve our most pressing problems here in the city of New Haven, in the state, in the country, or in the world through military domination. COVID-19 is a global problem. The solution will ultimately be a global solution. We need to do everything we can locally to prevent the spread, to support the vulnerable and to prepare for fair and rapid mobilization when vaccines and treatments become available. In the meantime, the solutions lie in cooperation, not domination.

Climate change is also a global problem. We are way behind in grappling with the complexities and the will to implement global solutions, so just as with COVID-19, we need to do everything we can locally to make sure that those most vulnerable have the resources they need to adapt to the heat, the flooding, the increases in disease and the massive economic shifts that we know are coming. We also need to radically change our city in cooperation with the state and the rest of the world to stop putting the gases into the air that will make climate change worse.

Shifting money from the military would provide enormous practical benefits—making money available for human health, jobs, and environmental sustainability in our city. It would also represent a paradigm change in the federal government by raising the focus on human needs, not just in response to a crisis, but in supporting the community to reduce and prevent the crises of the future. And maybe—just maybe—it could lead to more cooperation and less domination in our relationships with the rest of the world.