Letter: Administration’s goal is to kill social programs

Tuesday, June 3, 2003 | 9:03 a.m.

This is in response to the June 1 column written by the Sun's Benjamin Grove and headlined, "State tax hikes, federal cuts just don't add up":

Grove and the public just don't get it! This administration wants to put state and local governments in the deficit, tax-raising, program-cutting hot seat in order to force state and local governments to cut social programs. The apparent objective of the administration is to change or eliminate every social program developed over the past 70 years -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food for children, education, and yes, even programs for veterans. Political games are always played with the poor, the elderly and children. This time, however, the games are affecting the vast majority, the middle class, folk like you and I.

While public attention is focused on homeland security, orange alerts, WMD, energy prices, and other distractions, the federal deficit will be increasing. There's $500-plus billion dollars in tax cuts for the rich, the cost of two wars at $200 billion, homeland defense at $120 billion, rebuilding two foreign nations at $25 billion a year and other interesting federal deficit manipulations.

The administration has taken on a strategy of creating a fiscal crisis in order to either increase taxes (a no-no for any politically minded person), or to change or eliminate those social programs that will only increase in cost as the population of senior citizens increases.

State and local governments are at the bottom of the fiscal food chain and the buck stops there. They don't have the pleasure of deficit spending and will either have to raise taxes or reduce or eliminate social programs.

GIL EISNER