The predictable awfulness of the Bush Republicans
George Bush's new $2.3 trillion budget will have Roosevelt and Truman turning in their graves, writes William Keegan

William Keegan
Tuesday February 5, 2002
The Guardian

Some of my best friends are Americans. My father spent five happy years in the States during the 1930s and I was brought up to be pro-American.

"We shouldn't have won the war without them - and look what the Marshall plan did for Europe afterwards," was his consistent refrain. But in my father's book there was a strong distinction between Democrats and Republicans.

And, in due course, during my own association with the US, I came to realise that much of what was best in American values stemmed from the good work of those East Coast "liberals" who became such a favourite target for the Reagan Revivalists of the 1980s.

When George Bush came to town to reclaim the Republican crown that his father had lost to Bill Clinton, we wishy-washy liberals feared the worst. Clinton had worked hard to put the US government's finances on a sound footing, but George Bush and his merry men took one look at the result, rubbed their hands, and cried "tax cuts for us and our friends".

Then came the recession and the predictable downward revision to the fantastical forecasts of endless deficits stretching far into the future. Then came September 11 2001.

In their innocence the British prime minister, Tony Blair, and far too many other naive observers, thought that, after the tragedy, they might see something of a, to coin a phrase, "kinder, gentler America".

Well, there have been a number of episodes recently (that don't need spelling out) to disabuse people of this illusion. And the latest is undoubtedly the $2.13 trillion (£1.5 trillion) budget the president sent to Congress yesterday.

The largest and most significant element in this is the $1.7 trillion tax cut which is predominantly directed at the rich - in the immortal words of a past World Bank official - "at the sort of people who are wondering whether to install a fifth bathroom in their fourth home".

What about the third world whose poverty is linked by most observers to the kind of situation that breeds the terrorism Washington wishes to fight? Forget it.

Pleas for more foreign aid fall on deaf American ears. Why? In order to fund the tax cuts for the rich in somewhat less plentiful budgetary circumstances, the White House wishes to cut back on Medicaid and government retraining programmes.

There is something wonderfully predictable about the awfulness of the Bush Republicans. Oh, and by the way, the increase in the defence programme at $48bn will be roughly equivalent to the entire industrial country aid programme to the third world.

Roosevelt and Truman must be turning in their graves. A new generation of American liberals has new struggle on its hands. Good luck to them.

· William Keegan is the Observer's economics editor.