The Bush era: The end begins
The
George W. Bush era is not scheduled to end until January 2009, but
already there are clear signs of the waning of the incumbent’s
power. Last week, for the first time since Bush became president, the
U.S. Congress overrode a presidential veto.
The
vote came on a bill funding a large number of water infrastructure
projects across the country. It is the kind of legislation that
members of both parties love to enact as elections approach. It is
what in American politics is called “bringing home the bacon.”
Bush’s embarrassing defeat, which required the defection of many
Republicans, is a symptom of the president’s weakness and the fear
among GOP members of Congress — many of whom will be running for
their political lives come November 2008.
While
the water projects bill represents something that most Republicans
either support or at least can live with, Democrats did not pause
long to celebrate …
By
Max J. Castro Read Spanish Version
majcastro@gmail.com
The
George W. Bush era is not scheduled to end until January 2009, but
already there are clear signs of the waning of the incumbent’s
power. Last week, for the first time since Bush became president, the
U.S. Congress overrode a presidential veto.
The
vote came on a bill funding a large number of water infrastructure
projects across the country. It is the kind of legislation that
members of both parties love to enact as elections approach. It is
what in American politics is called “bringing home the bacon.”
Bush’s embarrassing defeat, which required the defection of many
Republicans, is a symptom of the president’s weakness and the fear
among GOP members of Congress — many of whom will be running for
their political lives come November 2008.
While
the water projects bill represents something that most Republicans
either support or at least can live with, Democrats did not pause
long to celebrate their victory before pushing through a piece of tax
reform legislation that truly sticks in the craw of what presidential
hopeful Mitt Romney calls “the Republican wing of the Republican
party,” in effect the GOP’s dominant rightist faction.
It
is no wonder that the Republicans are up in arms about the proposed
tax law, passed last week in the House of Representatives by a 216 to
193 largely party-line vote. Over the last seven years, Bush and his
Republican allies in Congress have engaged in an unacknowledged but
intense class war through a whole set of laws and policies that have
systematically favored the very rich. In contrast, the bill narrowly
approved by the House would increase taxes significantly on a few
thousand very wealthy hedge fund traders by closing a loophole in the
current tax code they have been using to boost their already huge
incomes to obscene levels. These revenues would be used to spare over
twenty million middle class families from being hit by a scheduled
tax increase averaging $2,000 a year without adding to the budget
deficit.
The
proposed change in the tax laws represents an attempt to fix flaws in
the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a law passed by Congress in 1969
to force wealthy taxpayers to pay some income tax. Before the AMT,
some taxpayers could avoid paying any taxes by using the multiple
loopholes provided in the tax code. However, the 1969 law failed to
index the Alternative Minimum Tax. After nearly 40 years of
inflation, the AMT will soon begin to hit middle class taxpayers
Congress never intended to target with the law. Of course, Congress
could simply do away with the AMT and thus spare middle class
taxpayers, but that would increase the deficit, which Democrats who
now control Congress have promised they would not do.
Unlike
the law to fund water projects, the bill to fix the AMT is unlikely
to pass in the Senate, much less survive a threatened Bush veto,
because in this case Republicans will close ranks in opposition.
Yet,
taken together, the veto override and passage of the AMT bill in the
House are significant. The veto override shatters the myth of Bush’s
invincibility in every showdown with Congress, and monolithic
Republican unity in the face of legislation pushed by the Democrats.
The AMT bill suggests the possibility of a future reversal of the
direction of economic redistribution such that it no longer benefits
the extremely privileged at the expense of all others but the other
way around.
Yet,
even if there is a clear Democratic victory in 2008 in the race for
the White House and the control of Congress, it will take a long time
and all of the political will and activism of progressives in and out
of the Democratic Party to reverse the damage done by Bush’s class
war. Many of the Democrats are nearly as beholden and solicitous to
moneyed interests as the Republicans. And the only way to persuade
them to do the right thing is to make it as costly and painful as
possible to do otherwise.
