27 Mar 2003 @ 17:20, by Sandi Hunter
Casualties at Home
>
> March 27, 2003
> By BOB HERBERT
>
> WASHINGTON - On Tuesday, as President Bush was asking
> Congress for the first installment of the hundreds of
> billions of dollars needed to finance the war in Iraq and
> its aftermath, the students and teachers at a high school
> within walking distance of the White House were struggling
> through their daily routine in a building that has no
> cafeteria, no gymnasium, no student lockers, not even a
> fully reliable source of electricity.
>
> A few weeks ago bricks were falling from the facade of the
> building, which is more than 100 years old.
>
> As we continue the relentless bombing of Baghdad, which the
> military tells us is the necessary prelude to saving it,
> it's fair to ask when the rebuilding of essential
> institutions like the public schools will begin here at
> home. (Don't hold your breath. The money for that sort of
> thing has completely evaporated.)
>
> "We actually have rooms where the water comes in when it
> rains," said Sheila Mills Harris, the principal of the
> School Without Walls, an academically rigorous high school
> that routinely finishes first or second in the District of
> Columbia's rankings.
>
> Laura Bush has visited the school, which has won a series
> of national honors. But academic honors and a visit by the
> first lady are, frankly, irrelevant in an era in which
> social concerns - such as support for public schools and
> health care, and the need to assist the poor, the hungry
> and the unemployed - have been forced to the perimeter of
> public consciousness. Those issues, crucial to our
> conception of ourselves as a just and humane people, have
> been devalued and shunted aside by an administration that
> is committed to an ill-advised, budget-busting war and a
> devastating parade of tax cuts for the very wealthy.
>
> With our attention riveted on the death and destruction in
> Iraq, and the continued threat to Americans in the war
> zone, the other very serious problems facing the U.S. get
> short shrift. We knew last fall that the proportion of
> Americans living in poverty had risen, and that income for
> middle-class households had fallen.
>
> We know that unemployment, especially long-term
> unemployment, is a big problem. And we've known that the
> states are facing their worst budget crisis since the Great
> Depression, a development that has led, among other things,
> to drastic cuts in education aid that are crushing the
> budgets of local public school districts.
>
> These issues aren't even being properly discussed. The Bush
> administration sounds the alarm for war and blows the
> trumpet for tax cuts, and Congress plunges ahead with the
> cuts in domestic programs that must inevitably follow. The
> voices of those who object are effectively silenced by the
> war propaganda and the fear of seeming unpatriotic.
>
> With attention thus deflected, the administration and its
> allies in Congress have come up with one proposal after
> another to weaken programs that were designed to help
> struggling Americans.
>
> In his budget last month the president offered a plan to
> make it more difficult for low-income families to obtain
> government benefits, including tax credits and school lunch
> assistance. This month, as The Times' Robert Pear reported,
> the administration proposed changes in the Medicare program
> that would make it more difficult for elderly people, many
> of them frail, to appeal the denial of benefits like home
> health care and skilled nursing care.
>
> The extent to which the most vulnerable Americans are being
> targeted is appalling. Billions of dollars in cuts have
> been proposed for food stamp and child nutrition programs,
> and for health care for the poor.
>
> Collectively, these are the largest proposed cuts in
> history. Even cuts for veterans' programs are on the table
> - in the midst of a war!
>
> The administration is actually fighting two wars - one
> against Iraq and another against the very idea of a humane
> and responsive government here at home.
>
> At some point, hopefully sooner rather than later, the war
> against Iraq will end. Americans will then have the
> opportunity to look around and be stunned by the fix we'll
> be in. We'll look at the enormous costs of the postwar
> occupation in Iraq, and at the social and economic
> dislocation that's occurring here. And we'll look at the
> disaster that the federal budget has become. We'll be
> broke, and we'll ask ourselves, again and again, "What have
> we done?"
>
> [link]
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