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# One catastrophic success after another for Bush
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/one-catastrophic-success-after-another-for-bush/
- Published: 2006-07-28T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T00:24:35.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By (Reach Bennet Kelley at)*

A “catastrophic success.” While President Bush used this paradoxical statement to characterize the situation in Iraq, it more aptly describes the principal war of this administration — the war of the elite versus the rest of America. Unlike Iraq, this class war is catastrophic precisely because the administration accomplished its mission since the toll, in terms of dollars and lives lost, may reach or exceed that of the Vietnam War.

Like the Iraq War, Bush launched this war with “Shock and Awe” through nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts which save millionaires nearly $50,000 annually at the expense of record deficits. Ninety-nine percent of Californians, however, received zero net benefit from the tax cuts, as the amount they received was more than offset by their share of the increase in the national debt.

The tax cuts were coupled with a regulatory approach defined by crony capitalism that is illustrated by the administration’s campaign to protect corporate lawbreakers by eliminating “responsible contractor” rules requiring agencies to take into account “violations of labor, employment, environmental, or consumer protection laws,” substantially reducing regulatory audits and enforcement and shifting the $1 billion annual cost for cleaning up hazardous waste sites from the polluters to the taxpayers.

Bush has showered his cronies with government contracts by increasing contracting 86 percent to record levels and doubling the number of no-bid awards.

Class war skeptics should consider the gross disparity in the administration’s tax enforcement policies. While consistently under-funding tax enforcement, the Bush administration has dramatically increased audits under the Earned Income Tax Credit program (“EITC”), which provides tax credits for the working poor, so that program recipients are the target of nearly half of all individual tax audits even though the program accounts for less than 4 percent of the “tax gap.”

The class warriors, however, will continue to make sure that the burden of the deficits falls on everyday Americans, as was clearly demonstrated this spring when the administration fought off attempts to increase taxes on oil companies enjoying record profits.

In this election it is critical that Democrats and the media make the debate about the real issues involved, including the war at home, so that on Election Day voters can decide whether a government of the few by the few and for the few is really their due.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 28, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/072806.pdf?ref=smdp.com)