Congress approves new budget: Higher taxes and fewer services

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danger to the new antiwar movement.

It assumes that the United States, or for that matter, the United Nations, has a right to be a party to the negotiations process.

It assumes that the sending of 300,000 troops to Saudi Arabia, like the sending of U.S. troops to Vietnam, justifies U.S. participation in a resolution to the "conflict."

If thieves enter your residence and point guns at your head, demanding your possessions, are they justified in engaging you in the "negotiations" process? It is true that in this situation, you, as the victim, might feel compelled to negotiate.

But would you expect your friends to insist that you and the thieves are on the same plane? Or would you, if you had the power, insist that the thieves withdraw immediately?

The U.S. thief in the Middle East has no negotiation rights. It was the United States and its allies which carved up the region in the first place, imposing their will by force (continued on page 7, in “Rod for Oil!”)

Last month, a budget bill was finally passed-but at heavy cost to the American working class. Leading Democrats and Republicans say the new budget will reduce the massive government deficit.

In truth, the new agreement will hit the American working class with new taxes and fewer social benefits. The new budget continues to protect the capital gains of the rich. Tax loopholes for them remain wide open.

After months of public wrangling between the White House and Congress over how much to take from working people, in the end the Democratic-controlled Congress voted to raise the maximum income rate from 28 percent to 31 percent. The new income taxes and other regressive sales taxes are supposed to increase government revenues by $165 billion.

While the Democrats are beating their breasts as champions of the poor, their "soak the rich" rhetoric is largely a misrepresentation. They and their Republican counterparts use such rhetoric only to appeal to voters. Both parties, over the last decade in particular, have rushed to find tax breaks for the rich and lower the real income of working people. Today even two-income families are having a difficult time paying for basic necessities.

The talk about the Treasury obtaining big revenue from the super rich "is all garbage, according to a former official of the Reagan administration quoted by The New York Times. The article points out that the new law is so complex that some taxpayers earning over $200,000 could end up paying less tax than before.

In 1988, the Internal Revenue Service reports, 472 couples and individuals earning $200,000 or more (with a total income of $211 million) paid no income tax at all. Of the high-income people who paid taxes, about 9300 paid less than 5 percent. An additional 17,082 reduced their liability to less (continued on page 5, in “200 march in Twin Cities to protest police killings of poor equals Shot-Klll”)