Spending the $3 trillion budget surplus

The Clinton Administration forecasts a cumulative $2.93 trillion federal budget surplus in the years 2000 to 2009. President Clinton says the surpluses are "the hard-earned product of our fiscal discipline" and proposes to use the funds to insure Medicare and Social Security solvency including a plan that would cover half the cost of prescription drugs for senior citizens. Clinton also proposes to earmark $156 billion of the surplus over the next decade for education and other domestic needs. He wants to spend more than $1.5 trillion on the Pentagon over the next five years.

Should the taxpayers cheer these budget and taxation policies? Certainly we favor guaranteeing the solvency of Social Security and Medicare. And the cost of prescription drugs forces many seniors to chose between food and medication. But as usual, Clinton's remedy is a half measure. Millions of welfare mothers and their children have been pushed deeper into poverty, in part because of Clinton's repeal of Aid for Families With Dependent Children. More than 48 million are without health care protection. Our urban public schools are dilapidated. There is a critical shortage of decent, affordable housing. Farmers are going bankrupt because Clinton signed the "Freedom to Farm" bill repealing New Deal farm price supports. These are critical unmet human needs caused in large part by vicious federal budget cutbacks inflicted by Presidents Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton.

But if these budget surpluses are real, then it is high time the people and their mass movements step forward with their own budget and taxation policies that really do meet our needs: a shift of the regressive tax burden from the backs of working people to Big Business and the wealthy, a cut in the military budget, a federally funded universal health care service, as much money as needed to provide free quality education K through college. Create a full employment economy. Rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and construct affordable public housing. We know the money is there because Clinton keeps bragging about it.