Sequestration nation II: The victims

By Max J. Castro

HAVANA – Austerity bites. And whether we are talking about the European road to ruin for tens of millions of people and entire countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Ireland, and Spain – among many others – or the U.S. path euphemistically called sequestration, austerity extracts its juiciest pound of flesh from the most vulnerable. The Wall Street bailouts and the German-imposed “rescue packages” benefit not the neediest but the greediest; they are not aimed to help the hardest working or the most deserving or the most desperate casualties of the crisis. Their function is to save the skin of the biggest banks, wealthy investors, and the richest economies.

We knew it would be very, very bad. Even the gang of those that Paul Krugman has labeled the deficit scolds, led in the United States by the likes of billionaire Pete Peterson and politicians like Paul Ryan, the pseudo-genius Republican hit man designated to deliver the kill shot to the tattered remains of the U.S. welfare state, knew it. But they pretended not to. Lying through their teeth, they claimed they were the ones really working to save wildly popular programs like Social Security and Medicare – by slashing them, denaturing them, and ultimately pulverizing them, leaving the “private sector” with a huge bonanza when the dust finally settles.

Austerity bites the weak hard. Now, just weeks since sequestration began to take effect in the United States, it is becoming clear just how deadly the bite of this fiscal pit bull really is. Austerity, it turns out, kills.

The CBS affiliate in New York is reporting that “The most vulnerable Americans, elderly cancer patients, are being turned away from community clinics…. They’re being denied chemotherapy because doctors said they can’t afford to absorb steep Medicare cuts for chemotherapy drugs.”

The station deserves credit for reporting on one of the most unconscionable effects of U.S.-style austerity. Still, even when it is exposing something that is nothing short of criminal, the corporate media can’t help but dilute the message. The passage quoted above is introduced by the following sentence: “They were supposed to save money, but an unintended side effect of federal budget cuts has prevented that.”

Budget cuts are always intended to save money, so the informational value of the first clause is zero. “Unintended side effect…” really? Not even Peterson, Ryan and his ilk are cruel enough to intentionally set out to kill elderly cancer patients by denying them their medicine. But what did they think would happen when programs like Medicare are slashed in order to balance the budget without upping the miniscule tax rates paid by the rich and maintaining negative tax rates for corporations like Exxon?

A person who gets behind the wheel with a 0.3 percent blood alcohol level isn’t intending to kill innocent people. But that is a likely result, and the lack of intent in no way absolves the drunk driver of responsibility for the homicide.

Finally, the story doesn’t make clear why withholding costly medicine from cancer patients at community clinics isn’t even accomplishing its intended objective: saving money. Logic suggests the reason is that such denial of service at the community level leads to even costlier visits to hospital emergency rooms, prolonged in-patient stays, and end-of-life care. This type of austerity thus is not only cruel but also counterproductive.

The denial of medications to cancer patients because of harsh cuts in Medicare is only the most outrageous result of American-style, slash-and-burn, willy-nilly austerity. But it does put the lie to the claims by the GOP and right-wing radio demagogues like Rush Limbaugh that budget cuts would not affect Medicare. Another especially callous cut is that to the Women, Infants, and Children’s (WIC) program. The web page of the Illinois Department of Human Services does a good job of explaining the purpose of WIC:

“WIC is a food assistance program for Women, Infants, and Children. It helps pregnant women, new mothers and young children eat well and stay healthy.”

In a country with one of the highest infant mortality rates among the rich nations – and one with rising hunger and large disparities in health outcomes related to race, income, education, and health insurance coverage – what could possibly be inhumane in applying the knife to this program?

The sequester will also add to the woes of the long-term unemployed, millions of people who have been out of work for at least six months, by cutting their meager benefits by 10 percent.

Then there are the cuts to public health, which mean, among other things, fewer vaccines will be administered. Basic epidemiology is clear that this affects not only the person who won’t receive the vaccine but increases the risk of disease for the nation’s population as a whole.

Cuts in a range of other programs, from domestic abuse prevention to support to first responders like firefighters and police, certainly will not make for a higher quality of life either.

Even the Pentagon, with a budget so vast it outstrips that of the militaries of the other major powers in the world combined, is sounding warnings about the effects of cuts on training and other priorities. Defense is the one department that should be cut drastically, but you can be sure that the same people eager to throw Women, Infants, and Children under the bus will not stand for any cuts in aircraft carriers, missiles, and tanks.

Finally, in an economy teetering between a modest recovery and another downturn, unable to fully right itself because of insufficient demand, layoffs and furloughs of government workers and cuts in programs will only make matters worse, possibly tipping the balance and bringing on another recession or even a depression should, for instance, the European Union unravel.

For more than three decades, this country has been enduring a relentless top-down class war. In a democracy, when the vast majority favor increasing taxes on the rich and oppose cutting Medicare and Social Security, at least one party should stand with the people. Alas, only the Progressive Democratic Caucus, a nearly powerless wing of the Democratic Party, has proposed a budget reflecting the interests of the vast majority of Americans.

The argument between the Republicans and the Democrats is one between parties working within the parameters of the right-tilted spectrum manufactured by thirty plus years of a reactionary vision and a vast economic redistribution from the bottom and the middle to the top.  

For many years we have been increasingly jettisoning the modest social achievements of American democracy and trending evermore toward plutocracy. Now it looks like we have finally arrived.