Duarte/far-right

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rocks EI Salvador elections The upcoming legislative elections in El Salvador have provoked a confrontation between the Christian Democratic Party, which controls the presidency, and the far-right parties, which control the Legislative Assembly.

Following reports that the U.S. Embassy in El Salvador was backing the far-right parties in elections scheduled for late March, President Duarte, a Christian Democrat, complained that he would protest the U.S. support for his adversaries. "It is unheard of that functionaries of the Embassy of the United States could give these sorts of declarations?' protested Duarte.

Though embassy spokespeople denied Duarte's accusations, a number of Western diplomats and U.S. Embassy sources have confirmed them. The U.S. government is left in the embarrassing position of supporting parties that bear much of the responsiReagan budget (continued from page l) freeze. Student aid would be cut by $2.3 billion and loans limited to families with annual incomes under $32,500—a measure that University of California officials estimate could render as many as one-third of their students now receiving aid ineligible.

Further cuts include a $2-billion markdown for urban aid and housing programs. Fees for national parks would rise 153 percent while purchases of new park lands would end. Funds for the Environmental Protection Agency would be frozen. Mass-transit subsidies would be cut by $800 million. Government support for AMTRAK would end.

Spending cuts would eliminate jobs in occupational and mine safety programs and in the Federal Contract Compliance Program, which is supposed to enforce laws barring federal contractors from discriminating against women and minorities. Some programs face outright elimination. These include the Small Business Administration, Legal Services Corporation, and the Job Corps. And the list goes on.

Democrats play dead The Democratic Party, for its part, answered Reagan's State of the Union speech defending his budget by way of a televised parade of Democratic voters explaining why they voted for Reagan. This self-abasing response was apparently intended to show that the Democrats can learn from their mistakes. House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. noted that the budget "deserves the seriSOCIALIST ACTIO ous consideration of the American people."

As for the "moderate" Republicans, Senate majority leader Robert Dole (RKansas) is proposing a plan that would combine cutbacks in proposed militaryoutlay increases with a one-year freeze on social security cost-of-living adjustments, which is not included in the Reagan budget. Dole has decided not to call his plan an "alternative" to the president's.

While much is being made of demands in Congress to tone down the more extreme aspects of the Reagan budget, the debate in Congress, in fact, will result in little more than an object lesson in democracy-big-business style.

"Administration officials contend,, as Paul Bluestein and Laurie McGinley observe in The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 4, 1985), "that the real differences over military outlays aren't as great as the rhetoric suggests. In the end, they note, the administration and Congress have always compromised."

As other observers have noted, the budget may arrive "dead on arrival," but it's "destined for adoption."

Congressional liberals, that is, can be expected to vent their outrage in some ritualized and therapeutic chest-thumping. In turn, some programs may be saved from the guillotine, military spending increases trimmed ever so slightly, and the media will hail the humanity of it all.

But the end result will remain the same-an unsavory recipe for a bloated Pentagon and malnourished social services. There won't be any pretense of a public debate, of course, over the billions of dollars earmarked for U.S. bility for the activity of the notorious death squads.

The dispute between Duarte and the far right has become exacerbated in recent weeks as the executive branch of the government, controlled by Duarte, battled the decisions of both the Legislative Assembly and the Supreme Court.

After Duarte vetoed an election law approved by the Assembly, the Supreme Court ruled his action unconstitutional. The original election law favored the ultraright parties by allowing them to form a coalition and continue to list the coalition candidates separately under their own symbols.

U.S. maneuvers The U.S. Embassy wants to preserve the existing rivalry between the different branches of government because it fears the consequences of allowing that struggle to take place in an uncontrolled manner outside of governmental institutions.

While the primary victims of the far right have intelligence activities and top-secret weapons that don't even appear in the budget.

Welfare for the rich It is hardly surprising then, despite the clamoring for a balanced budget, that the current fiscal-year deficit will still top $180 billion. A less-mentioned factor contributing to the swelling defi"I hate to see people going hungry like thatwaiter, can we move to another table?"

cit is the second-largest item in budget—$198.8 billion for interest the national debt.

This debt is primarily owed to financial institutions, corporations, and wealthy individuals but is paid for by millions of working taxpayers. It goes without saying that the role of interest payments as the Great Redistributor of the nation's wealth is not something the Great Communicator is inclined to communicate.

Military spending and interest payments on the national debt together the on right and Christian Democratic officials. One Salvadoran newspaper suggested that the Christian Democrats have formed "green brigades" in order to counter the activity of the far-right death squads, particularly in light of the assassination of an ARENA official.

Furthermore, the relative "restraint" practiced by the death squads immediately prior to and after Duarte's election, hailed by the Western press as proof of a "democratic transition" in El Salvador, seems to have been ended by the resumption of death-squad threats against Salvadoran unions and the Human Rights Commission.

The conflict between Duarte and the far-right military leaders is only moderated by the advantages the military gains from his presence. As one Salvadoran political analyst quipped: "Duarte is the man who has been able to open the coffers of the [U.S.] Congress, and the military realizes that. They won't get rid of the goose that is laying the golden eggs. He's the democratic facade so everybody doesn't have to worry....

The impossibility of real democratic reforms in El Salvador is just one additional reason why the U.S. government will ultimately have to choose between allowing the revolution to succeed or directly intervening with its own troops.

constitute over 40 percent of the federal budget. They are also the fastest-growing budget items. Clearly, Reagan's real concern is not so much bringing down the deficit as it is continuing the bountiful corporate profits of recent years. And that requires pumping up the military force to defend the system, both here and abroad.

Corporate leaders are, nonetheless, showing increasing concern that the spiraling budget deficit could throw a wrench into the wheels of economic recovery. Their dilemma is that military spending, the prime cause of the expanding deficit, is also the engine of the big-business profit bonanza.

Reagan's tax ruse Despite the administration's squawking denials, it is likely that a tax increase, under the ruse of a "simplification» plan, wil be introduced along with cuts in social programs. Of course, Reagan can be believed when he says that he opposes any increase in corporate taxes.

Military spending, interest payments, and corporate profits-the vast wealth of these big-ticket items offer a glimpse of the potential ability of our society to provide an abundant life for all. But the key to unlock that potential requires that the present capitalist structure give way to a society oriented toward the human needs of the working majority.

Such a proposal is certain to provoke a howl from business circles spoiled by their free ticket on the two-party express. But Reagan's no-frills flight to a born-again economy will hardly lead to heaven on earth for the rest of us. And in the long run that may well prove their undoing.

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The results of the trial were clearly