Column: Legislation to Die For

Let's face it. America's right turn has become an embarrassment--repeated exercises in political disgracefulness which only the ideologically obtuse or congenitally hypocritical could defend with any semblance of a straight face or personal honor. Such exercises have abounded in the last seventeen months, of course, but one need look no further than the present juxtaposition of right-wing policies on federal taxes and human welfare to get a genuine feel for the disgrace that is possible today. Here, at least, meanspirited attempts at"reforming" welfare are nicely balanced by a plutocratic concern for the affluent minority.

The hypocrisy on tax cuts alone has been enough to choke a woolly mammoth. They were first sold by conservative caregivers on the notion that our economy could afford them. Those beatific surpluses made possible the gutting of federal revenue, a radical increase in defense spending, and--it's still hard to think anyone believed this rhetorical falderal--the protection of Social Security and Medicare. As predictable as W.'s next session of mangling the English language, those assurances--once the initial stages of the tax cuts were in place--were slammed into reverse with indelicate speed.

Now we're told the permanency of those tax cuts, due to expire in 2011, is essential for the economy's growth; that its needed to pull us out and keep us out of a fiscal mess guaranteed, largely by the cuts themselves, to get messier. And it's all said with a straight face, with seemingly utter earnestness. Never mind that the already phased-in cuts next will send our reaccomplished deficits into the stratosphere, or what the resulting competition for borrowed dollars will do, for example, to mortgage rates and thus the economy as a whole. Just you never mind that. Furthermore for heaven's sake never mind that remaining middle-class tax savings are estimated at about only $200 per family annually, while those in the top 1 percent of income will see a tidy cut of around $45,000 per year.

And if you've just had a meal and plan on digesting it, don't even think about thinking about conservative duplicity on permanently repealing the estate tax. To hear today's crop of right-wing politicians talk, one would think Granny down on her 5-acre Arkansas farm will have nothing left for grandson Bubba after the feds are through with her"estate." Naturally they don't mention that in-place estate-tax provisions affect an extreme minority; or that they rejected a compromise to raise the estate exemption to $5 million. That proposal would have left only about 3,300 families subject to the tax, and based on their average holdings in excess of the exemption each would have survived the federal imposition with roughly $10 million to spare.

It has, sadly, under House Republican leadership and Bush II become commonplace to observe that when it comes to the haves, conservatives simply can't do enough. And when it comes to the have-nots, they do handsprings in doing too little. It's their curious contribution to the age-old ethic of lending a hand to the impoverished. It's government-advertised Christian values abused and degraded. It is, in short, obscene.

Recently passed House welfare-reform legislation, urged by the White House, is a disgrace not only in the eyes of progressives, but surely to the partisanly indifferent and even rank-and-file conservatives who don't yet light candles to statuettes of W. and Tom DeLay. Bad enough was the Clinton administration's stripping of a national guarantee for the systemically disadvantaged, which, as the economy contracts, in time will turn from a much-ballyhooed success to a recognized short-sighted disaster. Still, the 1996 abomination wasn't enough for conservative creatures dwelling in the ethical sewers of Congress and the White House. More had to be whittled away.

The particulars of the House welfare bill have been reported extensively, leaving no cause to repeat them here. Suffice it to say they give ideology a bad name, and in the worst way. In their struggle to appease the laissez-faire gods and leave godforsaken individuals to their own devices, comfortable Republican chieftains have issued unreasonable demands on budget-busted states, unrealistic demands on the chronically unemployable, and unconscionable demands on millions of destitute and friendless children. For some, ill-housed and ill-fed, it could be legislation to die for.

This product of lower-house inspiration has now moved on to the Senate, which soon will inherit the House's estate-tax hysteria as well. If Democrats there fail to square bottom-up compassion for the needy with top-down reason for the wealthy, progressives might as well throw their votes away on some other useless party. It's too bad Norman Thomas is gone, though I'd cast a vote for him anyway in the event of Democratic me-tooism. Even a dead socialist beats a live Democrat who finds himself cowering in the face of brave and new, heartless and thoughtless conservatism.

Either the Democratic Senate ends the embarrassment our government has become, or it can pay the price of history's judgment. Even that's not much, considering the price others are forced to bear in the grips of a disgraceful right-wing age.