Finally, Fiscal Responsibility

This being our special issue on sustainability and consumerism, I wanted to distract us from the topic of personal responsibility before somebody notices that I have more than one car. So let’s quickly broaden the conversation to include the federal government, an institution that is currently embroiled in its own issues of fiscal sustainability, in particular the future of critical entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, and Lockheed Martin.

Living outside our nation’s capital, you may be uninformed on these issues, given that a chastened liberal media has decided to abandon its constitutional mandate and pretty much cover Michael Jackson 24 hours a day. To your credit, however, many of you plan to lodge a formal complaint with the local television station, just as soon as you see what the Style channel is saying about the jury’s outfits.

The good news is that, in its recently released 2006 budget proposal, the White House has finally confronted powerful lobbies and cut government programs that have for decades placed an enormous burden on our national treasury. With apologies to no one, the Bush budget simply pulls the plug on these special interests and their narrow agendas.

Such as schools for American Indian children.

Also, emergency food aid for the poor.

These are just two of the wasteful programs against which the Bush administration has vowed to stand up and say, simply, "Enough." In its bold commitment to cut the federal deficit, the president has vowed to bring an end to the unchecked influence wielded by the undernourished and the undereducated who, since World War II, have been gorging themselves at the public trough. Meanwhile, lobbyists for underrepresented groups - such as the defense industry - have been forced to grovel for the crumbs left over.

If this budget passes, gone will be the days when lawmakers cringe at the sight of the poor and the elderly walking the halls of government like they own the place. No more will minorities "have their way" with legislators who are forced to take meetings - often instead of spending time with patriotic representatives of the oil industry - to listen to these groups place their own selfish needs above the good of the country.

No more will legislators cower before bullying students pressing their demands for more college aid. From now on those annoying students will have to pay their own way, and write the check themselves, just like the parents of rich kids do.

And no more will assistance to the physically disadvantaged be the third rail of American politics. It’s bad enough that, because of draconian accessibility laws, the handicapped can simply roll their one-sided agendas into congressional offices, while offshore-drilling lobbyists are forced to take the stairs.

THIS RIGHTEOUS OUTRAGE was partly triggered when White House officials noticed that new school construction on American Indian reservations comprised almost .00000000000003 percent of the federal budget. Clearly, the time for compromise was over.

Not to say that American Indian children don’t have as much right to federal funds as, say, a worthy corporate citizen like Halliburton. But American Indians are still peeved about being moved - completely at government expense, I might add - to their spacious lands, despite the fact that, should a market develop for sun-baked rock and cactus, they are sitting on a potential goldmine. Which begs the question: Where is the gratitude?

Understandably, the White House proposal assumes that tax breaks for the wealthy will be extended in perpetuity - a Latin expression that means, literally, "If I didn’t need all this money, Mumsy wouldn’t have given it to me in the first place." And the administration fully expected criticism for this and other efforts to repeal the New Deal. Although White House officials concede that the name they came up with - the Raw Deal - has not tested well with focus groups, the president is undeterred. In his view, the needs of the poor and the sick have for too long dominated the national agenda. He wants the American people to know that, finally, there is someone in the Oval Office who understands that the wealthy are people, too.

After all, the back seat of a limousine can be a very lonely place.

Ed Spivey Jr. is art director of Sojourners.