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Paul Krugman’s recent column at The New York Times calls attention to what most thinking people have been noticing for some time: The self-declared “patriotic” Republican-controlled government is screwing us all behind our backs.

The fog of war has concealed some of the worst hypocrisy imaginable. Take, for example, the act of praising our troops in one resolution, then screwing them in the next:

Since the war began, members of the House of Representatives gave speech after speech praising our soldiers, and passed a resolution declaring their support for the troops. Then they voted to slash veterans’ benefits.

Yeah, the troops are our nation’s “finest citizens” the Republicans say, but we need those gigantic tax cuts, so we really can’t afford to provide any benefits for our nation’s finest. What hollow words echo through the halls of Congress these days!

The clever folks over at Daily Kos note that, while the federal government is busy trying to cut taxes, state and local governments are scrambling to make up for lost revenue. Logic tells us that tax cuts are not magic pixy dust; the money that is lost in one area will have to come from somewhere.

Krugman knows where the money will come from: Big cuts in social spending.

...[T]he list of cuts—in child nutrition, medical care for children, child-care assistance and support for foster care and adoption (leave no child behind!)—was clearly designed to suggest that the budget can be balanced on the backs of the poor, without any significant cuts in programs that benefit the middle class.



Aside from its mean-spiritedness, this suggestion is simply false: our deficits are too large, and our current spending on the poor too small, for even the most Scrooge-like of governments to offer additional tax cuts for the rich without raising taxes or cutting benefits for the middle class.

The fog of war also allows the Republicans to wrap themselves in the flag and pretend to be both the party of financial responsibility and the party of national security, when in fact neither seem to be true. Although the Republicans like to talk tough on matters of national security, they seem awfully reluctant to provide adequate funding for it. The truth of the matter is that Bush is leading his party—and our whole country with it—into a disaster. Unfortunately, it seems that the average American is too busy being patriotic to notice the problems looming on the horizon.

Why the American people cannot see this is beyond me. I have long maintained that Bush’s approval ratings (currently hovering around 71 percent, mainly because of his ”war boost”) have been about 60 percentage points too high for his entire presidency.

The only good thing about this whole mess, I suppose, is that no one can blame the Democrats for anything (well, holding up the Estrada nomination maybe, but that’s about all). With the Republicans in full control of the entire government, the blame for what is being done behind our backs is all theirs.

In closing, back to Krugman:

Someday the public will figure all this out. But it may be a very long wait.