![]() ![]() Health and Human Services: The proposed cut of 9% to Health and Human Services, including a 16% cut to the Centers for Disease Control, is homicidal. All to coddle some well-connected fossil fuel, auto and truck corporations. Further, researchers recently calculated that 80,000 additional lives would be lost every decade if this administration completes its rollback of clean air protections. ![]() ![]() The Environmental Protection Agency: The proposed cut of 27% is nothing less than insane, given increased coastline flooding and erosion, more extreme wildfires, worsened hurricanes and prolonged droughts from the climate crisis, all of which is estimated to cripple economic growth in this decade. Even a majority of US veterans doubt that the trillion dollar wars they fought in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were worth fighting Why not build our diplomacy capacity, given we have failed wretchedly in war since World War II in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the second Iraq War, and Syria, leaving millions dead, injured physically and spiritually, homeless and hungry. State Department: If Trump has his way, the State Department may be cut by 23 percent, thus undermining potentially more effective and intelligent response to conflict, such as diplomacy and humanitarian aid. If successful the company is guaranteed a 7-year patent, can set prices controls on it, will benefit from grants and tax credits, and could block manufacturers from developing generic versions at lower costs and more affordable for patients. Another gift to corporate America is granting Gilead Sciences the exclusive right to research the drug remdesivir that shows potential for treating the coronavirus. Trump’s proposed budget is one that prizes corporate life over human life militarized security and walls over tackling the challenge of a humanistic immigration policy and the wealthy over the rest of us. Ninety-one of the flourishing Fortune 500 companies paid no income taxes in 2018, and most of the rest paid half the rate they ought to have paid by tax regulation. Thanks to this tax cut – the rich get richer: 72 percent of the tax cuts were directed to the wealthiest 20 percent of households. The 2017 tax cut – hyped as a bonus for all – has left our government with a multi-billion dollar debt that could have funded the missing coronavirus test kits, medical safety equipment, vaccine research, and urgently needed basic health care. Budget priorities also include $2.3 billion investments in militarized border security technology, infrastructure and equipment, new border fencing, and hiring an additional 750 Border Patrol agents. ![]() The proposed CBP budget would go from $14.8 billion to $15.6 billion, to bolster snatching babies and children from their parents at the US-Mexican border and caging them in crowded, unsanitary conditions. Under Trump’s proposed budget, ICE – the agency whose agents seize parents from their jobs and homes for deportation – will double by 2024. Two other winners are Immigration and Customs Control (ICE) and its sister agency Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). With no plan to quarantine the crew, they talked of taking off doors in flight. US Army Aviation aircrews were ordered to airlift coronavirus patients to local hospital without masks, disinfectant and medical guidelines. Paralyzed by indecision, mid-level leaders were waiting for higher command decisions. For at least two weeks after our country was advised to implement social distancing, Army and Marine soldiers, against their own fears, were compelled to continue training in close mass formation. Tens of thousands of soldiers and their families rely on food stamps. Military corporations, though, trump military personnel. Moreover in the midst of the coronavirus (Covid-19) epidemic, the Pentagon is increasing periodic progress payments made to military manufacturers to keep them on schedule, a move described as a “taxpayer rip-off” by one retired Pentagon official. Military weapons makers are the biggest winners raking in nearly ½ of every Pentagon dollar, an estimated $350 billion, annually. As one retired colonel observed, “the military gravy train is running at full speed.” In snapshot, the Pentagon gets 55% and every other need of 331 million people–from health, education, agriculture, transportation, environmental protection to housing–is left with 45%. So also is tax policy.Ĭonsider Trump’s proposed $1.3 trillion discretionary budget for 2021. Greenfield, MA (Special to Informed Comment) -Budgets are moral documents (or immoral, depending on priorities). ![]()
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