bigger, but the formula will be grimly familiar to British readers: the Budget cuts now being proposed by the Republican-controlled US Congress would slash at Icast 10 percent ($2.7 billion, £1.8bn) from federal education spending.
Much of this would come from the federal assistance programme for poor children, 'special needs' help forteachers. School lunch programmes would be cut, along with muld ingoal icaching. anti-violence programmes and job skill training.
In California alone the school cuts would be at least $260m next year. Republicans adamantly defend the cuts as a device to balance the Federal budget, and facilitate tax curs to the modi class "It's definitely a belttightening year, but this only puls a scapes to concation not a meat-axe." insisted one spokeswoman.
Meanwhile Congress has also voted to scrap a 60-ycar old federal commitment to guarantee help to the poor. with the decision to abolish central funding of social security, devolving budgets to state level. A massive $270 billion is to be slashed from the Medicare and Medicaid budgets over five years, forcing up monthly payments by US pensioners, while cutting S250 billion from the taxes of the well-to-do.
The theme behind the Repubik an offensive is also 1a. miliar to British readers: the argument is that "middle class Americans - which is who work - are paying too much tax, and that cuts in these welfare and education programmes would enable them to 'keep more of their 093 B Of course it is a fraud. Taxes may be held down. but the costs or wetare scrvices fall instead on cach individual worker and family. Income taxes - progressive, in that the nichest pay most - are mini mised, but indirect taxes -which hit the poor hardest - total despair.
Profiteers rity
Amecan worc coainy reasonable salaries will find themselves obliged to shell out even more in insurance payments to the procerne companies which run the privatised medical services: the 40 million Americans (00 poor to arrora micoical insur ance face a worsening fallback service as state-funded ler since 1992 has been marked by Their attacks on NHS and welfare state have weakened Tory standing in opinion polls hospitals and clinics are can be electorally discounted. threatened with cuts and clo- so long as the support is enlisted of the middle and The crosion of state wealthy layers of society. schools will undercut the edu. cation of middle class kids Widening gap even while it plunges those The Thatcher government with the greatest needs into in Britain pioneered this approach. But though the gap The withdrawal of the fed. between rich and poor in Brit eral safety net for social secu- ain has been massively wid.
will enable ened by tax concessions to the hard-faced state legislators to rich, and while state pensions buy a few votes by cutting have been squeezed, benefits state taxes even as they widen cut, and services axed, the basill furter tae gap between sic core of health and welfare the haves and have-nots, trigservices has been too popular gering even more misery, soopen assault.
Such policies. in the USA Instead their attacks on the and elsewhere, are based on a welfare state have helped recynical calculation - that the duce John Major's governpoorest millions who lose out ment to record low levels of from attacks on vital services public support, while sections of the rural middle classes have led the ranks of those fighting cuts in education spendingOpinion polls suggest that the US Republicans, like the Tories in Britain, may have miscalculated. The impact of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America' seems to have been to have boosted Presi. dent Clinton's standing in the polls and undercut the Republicans, who recently won landslide support.
In France, too, the Chirac government has rapidly plunged to new recordw in opinion polis. The policies of the populist righe always seem better to voters in sound-bites than they do when implemented.
The fatal handcalism of the right wing in pursuing their agenda has produced a corresponding retreat by the opposition.
Bill Clinton promises noisily to veto the Republican cuts. but counterposes his own package of spending cuts and tax reductions, which would also foist new burdens onto working people while lining the wallets of the rich.
And Tony Blair. despite riding high on a tide of hostility to the Tories, has not only ditched Clause Four but embraced the principles and methods of the capitalist market system, courting business leaders with promises not to increase taxation.
Without extracting more money from the rich, Blair can do nothing to improve the situation of working people.
That's one key reason why his right wing team is incapabie of confronting and challenging the Tory attacks.
The retreat can only be stopped by building a strong enough resistance at the base Party and the local communities which are feeling the aunt or nose alack That's why the campaigns of parents, students and teachers against education cuts. the fightback of health workers and campaigners against cuts and privatisation in the NHS, and the solid resistance of the striking Liverpool fire fighters are so amportant.
Though cach is limited in scope. by drawing a line in defence of welfare and public services, these struggles implicitly fly in the face of the dynamics or capianism. ne) serve to link the poorest and the middle layers - the major- in strusele against the politics of the wealthy few.
That's the bit that terrifies Tony Blair, and his timid co. thinkers around the world. refused to wear a flak jacket.