OpEdNews - Page 5 of Article: Sen. Bernie Sanders: Why He Opposes the Nussle Appointment as OMB Director

What else does the President's budget have to say about the priorities of this country? What about childcare?

At a time when our childcare and early childhood education systems are totally inadequate to meet the needs of working parents, the Bush budget reduces the number of children receiving childcare assistance by 300,000.

Amazingly, child care fees today are higher than college tuition at a four year public university in 42 states in this country. In other words, we have a childcare crisis in this country. The President's response: Deny childcare to 300,000 children. That is wrong! The President needs an OMB Director to tell him that. Jim Nussle is the wrong person, at the wrong time for this job.

What else? The President's budget provides a $100 million cut to the Head Start program. Today, only about half of the children eligible for this important and excellent program actually participate in Head Start due to a lack of funding. In other words, millions of kids cannot get into Head Start. The President's response: Cut Head Start funding. That is wrong. He needs a Budget Director to tell him that. Jim Nussle is the wrong person for that job.

As I mentioned earlier, while hunger in this country is shamefully increasing, the President's budget proposes to deny food stamps to 280,000 families and eliminates nutrition assistance to over 400,000 senior citizens, pregnant mothers, and newborn children. That is unacceptable. The President needs a Budget Director who understands this. Jim Nussle is the wrong man for that job.

What else? Well, we are in a war in Iraq. We are in a war in Afghanistan. The number of our veterans is increasing. Over Twenty-seven thousand have been wounded, many seriously. Many will come back to this country with post-traumatic stress disorder. Yet the President has proposed cutting the VA budget by $3.4 billion over five years, after adjusting for inflation.

And, on and on it goes.

In this great country, with so many people struggling desperately to keep their heads above water, we should not be cutting back on the promises made to our veterans. We should not be cutting back on health care. We should not be cutting back on nutritional benefits for senior citizens on fixed-incomes and pregnant mothers. We should not be cutting back on Head Start, affordable housing, and educational opportunities for middle-class families. That is what we should not be doing. The President needs a Budget Director who understands this. Jim Nussle will not do this. He is the wrong man at the wrong time for this job. Just look at the Budget Resolutions Mr. Nussle crafted as Chairman of the House Budget Committee. In most cases, Jim Nussle's budgets were even more extreme than the President's.

Now, while the President has said in his budget that we don't have enough money to address the needs of the middle class, working families, senior citizens, children and veterans, the President has said that we do have enough money to provide $739 billion in tax breaks over the next decade to households with incomes exceeding $1 million per year. The average tax break for this group of millionaires will total $162,000 by the year 2012.

Let me be very blunt. In my view it is wrong, in my view it is immoral to give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires -- the people who need them the least --while cutting back on the needs of the middle-class and working families of our country. That is wrong.

Is the President's budget, a reflection of the values of the people of our country? I do not believe that. I do not believe ordinary Americans think it is right and appropriate to give tax breaks to billionaires and then provide inadequately for our veterans, for our children, and for our seniors. That is not, in my view, what America is about.

We are told over and over again by the President and this Administration that we do not have the money to reduce childhood poverty in this country. We are told we do not have the funds to wipe out the disgrace of hunger in America. We are told we do not have enough money to make sure the young people who graduate from high school in this country, who are excited about going to college, will be able to do so without coming out deeply in debt.

We do not have the money to help those families. Yet, while we turn our backs on the middle-class and working families of our country, it appears we have plenty of money for the millionaires and billionaires of this country. We have tens of billions, in fact, to shower on those who need it the least, yet we have nothing, and we are cutting back on the programs, for those who need it the most.

Included in the President's budget, amazingly, is the complete repeal of the estate tax which would take effect at the end of 2010. The complete repeal of this tax would benefit only the top three-tenths of 1 percent of the American people. Let me repeat that. The complete repeal of the estate tax would benefit solely the upper three-tenths of 1 percent of the American population.

These are families, of course, who already are millionaires and billionaires, and these are families who in the current economy have been doing exceedingly well. In other words, 99.7 percent of Americans would not benefit by one nickel from the complete repeal of the estate tax, as proposed by the President.

According to the President's budget, this repeal of the estate tax would reduce receipts for the Treasury by more than $91 billion over the next 5 years and more than $442 billion over the next decade. But the long-term damage to our fiscal solvency is even worse.

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