Washington’s presents for the 1 Percent

CONGRESS ISSUED a public declaration of its own corruption, stupidity and immorality last week in the form of a budget for 2015.

As marchers against police lawlessness took over streets across the country in the largest protest movement since Occupy Wall Street, Democrats and Republicans in Washington were proving the demonstrators right by showing how the rich and powerful get to decide how laws are made and enforced.

The legislation, which will fund most government programs through next year and the Department of Homeland Security through February, calls for a budget of $1.1 trillion. More than half of that money--$585 billion--is devoted to the generals, spies and weapons contractors at the Department of Defense.

That includes $3 billion for weapons systems the Pentagon didn't even request, but that companies like Boeing and Lockheed-Martin lobbied for. Meanwhile, Congress cut close to another $100 million from food stamps--officially known as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP)--less than a year after SNAP was devastated by an $8 billion cut in last February's farm bill.

The IRS budget was cut to the lowest level since 1998, which will only put pressure on future budgets by making it easier for wealthy people and corporations to avoid paying taxes.

Congress justified this cut as punishment for an agency that engaged in wrongdoing by targeting political organizations for audits. But, of course, there were no funding reductions for the CIA, which was exposed in a recent Senate report to have engaged in even more widespread torture and misinformation than was previously known. Nor were there any cuts to police departments across the country that have engaged in wanton violence, primarily against people of color--unless you count the denial of President Barack Obama's request for body cameras as a budget cut.

Meanwhile, the government agency tasked with fighting climate change--a threat far greater than street crime, which continues to decline, or terrorism, which is less successful than furniture at killing U.S. citizens, according to statistics--continues to be cut to the bone. The budget for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was cut by $60 million--at a time when the EPA already has its fewest employees in 25 years.

PERHAPS THE most outrageous parts of the budget, however, were a pair of provisions that, when taken together, make the Capitol building resemble a fat middle finger directed at the 99 Percent.

The first rolls back one of the toughest measures in generally half-hearted legislation--generally known as Dodd-Frank--to re-regulate the banks after the 2008 Wall Street meltdown. Banks will be allowed to keep using customers' money, which is insured by the federal government, to invest in the types of risky and often crooked derivatives that collapsed the financial system six years ago.

The second provision, located on page 1,599 of the 1,603 page legislation, increases tenfold the limits on individual donations to political parties: from $32,400 to $324,000.

The juxtaposition of Congress and Wall Street scratching each other's backs is insultingly obvious. As Maryland Democrat Rep. Chris Van Hollen put it, "You've got the quid and the quo in one bill."

There are many other horrible aspects of the new law, which Obama signed on Tuesday.

Congress blocked Washington, D.C.'s marijuana legalization measure that city voters approved in November by a more than two-thirds majority--a slap in the face to a majority Black city at a time of large-scale protests against a criminal justice system that uses drug laws to profile and victimize people of color. The budget bill also gives mining giant Rio Tinto access to land in Arizona that is sacred to Apaches and other Native American tribes.

In short, the legislation contained a plethora of holiday presents for almost every corporate interest and reactionary cause imaginable.

Every aspect of the law is revolting, even for the vast majority of Americans who have grown used to the stench of hypocrisy and corruption emanating from their capital. To begin with, there is the usual practice of cramming hundreds of special favors to corporate donors into unrelated spending bills.

Republicans who normally decry wasteful government spending happily played the game. "It's never good to see big packages with so many things in them," said Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake, trying to justify sneaking his land giveaway to Rio Tinto into the budget bill. "But it's been very difficult to move individual pieces of legislation over the last few years."

Other members of Congress used the opportunity to slip in a provision suspending safety rules for truck drivers, lifting the number of hours drivers can drive in a week from 70 to 82. Maine Sen. Susan Collins had tried to get this passed in June, but had to halt the effort when a Walmart driver finishing a 14-hour shift severely injured actor Tracy Morgan and killed comedian James McNair. But all Collins and her fellow industry allies in Congress had to do wait a few months before they passed this dangerous law without any public comment.

Flake and Collins are Republicans, but when it comes to sheer dishonesty, the GOP might have been outdone this round by their Democratic opponents.

THE DEMOCRATS claim they signed on to this preposterously unjust budget in order to prevent another government shutdown. But there was no credible threat of that happening.

In the weeks leading up to the deal, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, the Tea Party darling, tried to rally conservatives behind another shutdown to protest Obama's recent executive action on immigration. But most Republicans made it clear that they planned to wait to retaliate until February, when they had control of both the House and Senate. Yet Democrats continued to negotiate as if the continuation of government operations hung in the balance.

That's if you can even call what they did negotiation. The budget deal used the same funding framework as the one negotiated by Republican Paul Ryan and Democrat Patty Murray to end the last shutdown in 2013. Though Democrats claimed a political victory at the time because the GOP's Tea Party wing was forced to drop its attempt to repeal Obamacare, the budget deal itself was closer to what Republicans were demanding all along.

This year, the Republicans got the same agreement, plus the repeal of the Dodd-Frank provision and the increase in campaign contributions, in exchange for...nothing.

Without even a single positive feature to show to Democratic voters, even House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi had to come out against the bill, along with liberal Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. But Obama and Vice President Joe Biden went around Pelosi and Warren, and lobbied congressional Democrats to vote yes.

Why would Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and other leading Democrats fight for such a horrible bill? Because they support it. The radical cuts in spending it continues are in line with the austerity agenda Obama has promoted ever since becoming president, and Democrats at every level of the party have plenty of Wall Street donors to take care of.

The threat of a government shutdown has become a part of politics as usual in Washington, D.C. Republicans use it to extract deeper and deeper cuts in spending--unless it's programs they support, like the military or the FBI. But Democrats also exploit the shutdown threats to justify why they accept horrible legislation that only benefits the rich.

POLITICIANS AND government officials may have some of the lowest approval ratings on record, but they are actually doing a great job of serving their real constituents in the 1 Percent.

The U.S. political class presents a spectacle of budget-cutting Republican maniacs and weak-willed Democrats, presided over by a president who is less interested in leading around any of the issues where he promised to do so, than in portraying himself as a well-intentioned man stymied by Congress and the Republicans.

Official Washington, Democrats and Republicans alike, is portrayed as being stuck in gridlock. But this picture misses the fact that a great deal has been accomplished--for those who rule over American society.

Corporate profits have risen by more than 20 percent in the past four years. The U.S. economy is outperforming most of its main rivals, even as many economists warn--or celebrate the fact--that most working people should get used to permanently lower living standards.

Of course, these economists aren't running for office. A recent New York Times article discussed the dilemma facing Democrats: They can't brag about how their policies have successfully restored the strength of the U.S. economy because that economy is based on the majority of Americans facing long-term poverty and job instability for the benefit of the few at the top.

In the lead-up to the next presidential election, liberal politicians like Elizabeth Warren and nominal independent Bernie Sanders will build a following by criticizing how their own party has been too soft in standing up to Republicans and corporate interests.

But the fact is that the Democratic Party hasn't caved to corporate interests. It has faithfully represented them--at least as well as the Republicans and possibly better. This budget fiasco is the latest demonstrations that both mainstream parties are rotten to the core.