Budget priorities

The US budget seems to get a bit more scrutiny than the British one, which is perhaps why there's usually little attempt to disguise where the spending priorities lie. It doesn't require close analysis. The first paragraph of what will be the FT's front-page story on it tomorrow lays out the key elements:
"The White House on Monday put national security at the centre of its budget priorities, proposing increases in defence and homeland security while calling for $65bn in cuts in areas such as health insurance for the elderly and long-term entitlement reform."
The other coverage gives some interesting comparison figures. The tax cuts implemented in the first term - some of which are temporary that the administration wants to make permanent - are estimated at costing $100bn or so per year (very conservative estimate - see ibid.) It's worth bearing in mind that those cuts overwhelmingly affected the top 2% of earners.
The biggest cuts will be made to Medicare - the programme that provides a little relief to those on the sharp edge of what may be the most inefficient healthcare system in the world - which will lose $36bn (ibid.) The military budget rises to $439bn but that figure does not include "requests for $9.3bn to maintain the US nuclear arsenal or $50bn in emergency spending to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The White House last week asked for an additional $70bn in emergency spending for the fiscal year 2006." This brings "the total cost of the war [on terror] since 2001 to $443bn."
A mass of figures, but the main point is that the gigantic defence spending dwarves the cuts to welfare and health programmes, but these stingy cuts will have serious effects on America's most vulnerable and needy citizens (the elderly, single parents, the ill/disabled, inner-city African-Americans and other minority groups - Lord help those unfortunate enough to be a combination of these things).
"National priorities" require "tightening our belts elsewhere" the director fo the Office of Management and Budget Joshua Bolten asserts. Clearly, the safety and well-being of the American people in no way constitute a "priority" for the administration.

The institutionalised disparities and attempts to ensure that the dispensable elements in American society become disengaged from civil and political life create constraints on freedom and democracy that far outweigh the abuses that so outrage the "left-liberal" intelligentsia (at the moment, matters of principle like domestic spying and other 'civil liberties'). Too many who lamented Bush's re-election and the decline of Democratic politics are living in a bubble where politics is something detatched from their everyday experience, and matters of democratic principle matter more than then health or welfare policies. Little wonder, then, that as disillusioned New Englanders wonder "What's the matter with Kansas?," those on the receiving end of the Republicans worst excesses at home, who ought to form a base of political support for those presenting themselves as an "alternative" to this reactionary government, feel as though these people and the political programmes they pursue are no more relevant to them or representative of their interests than those of the Republicans.
If prospects look dim for those who care about the future of America, it is less because a group of reactionaries have taken the reigns and led the country down a dangerous, potentially disastrous path (although they have) and more because their political opponents have been completely unable to formulate an alternative that will address the major concerns of what ought to be their core constituency.
There are sources of hope for the future, but you'd have a hard time finding them among the Democrats.