This is National Security?

The cost of the War in Iraq is now at least $75 billion a year.

Citizens for Tax Justice reports that tax cuts benefiting the top 1% of the country--households earning more than $1.2 million a year (who now receive $44,000 in tax cuts)--will cost the government $61 billion--nearly the entire cost of the War.

In 1861, Abraham Lincoln persuaded Congress to impose a tax on personal incomes to pay for the military in the Civil War. By 1864, people with incomes between $400 and $5,000 were taxed at a rate of 5%. People with incomes over over $5,000 were paying 10%.

Today, households earning more than $1.2 million pay only 3.5% of their annual income in taxes.

In 1898, under our first modern Republican President--William McKinley--Congress passed the first inheritance tax in American History to help finance the Spanish-American War.

Today, the Bush administration is fighting to *end* the inheritance tax--calling it a "death tax."

The guiding principle here is that while it's an honor to die for your country, it's an imposition to pay for it.

So how *are* we financing the War?

Well, we're borrowing a lot of money from other countries. That's what the deficit forces us to do. More than $ 1 trillion in American bonds is now held by foreign banks led by Japan and China. If Communist China stopped buying US bonds, or sold them outright, bond prices would fall and interest rates would rise wreaking havoc on mortgage rates and home sales throughout the United States.

I know that American conservatives are perfectly happy to buy goods "Made in China" but how do they feel about going deeper and deeper in debt to the Chinese government?

The other way to reduce the deficit is to cut spending. The Bush administration is big on that.

But what does the administration want to cut?

"First Responder" Homeland Security. Down 26% since 2003.

Local Law Enforcement. Bush wants to end it.

Support for Local Police. Bush fought to end it last year. Failing that, now he wants to cut it by 86%

Firefighters Grants. Cut them by 60%.

In Philadelphia, the National Park Service wants to cordon off the area around Independence Hall as if this somehow will blunt a terrorist attack.

Meanwhile, 300 people have died in our streets since January but federal funding to support local police is gone.

If this is the Bush administration's idea of security in the United States, what on earth must they be doing in Iraq?

Ed Schwartz
Institute for the Study of Civic Values
http://www.iscv.org