Why does George Bush love Paris Hilton?

One of George Bush’s main goals in his six years in office has been the permanent repeal of the estate tax. For those of you not completely up to date on the federal tax code, the estate tax applies to wealth in the form of money or property that is passed from one generation to the next.

It also only applies to individuals with estates of $2 million or higher. Last year, the estate tax applied to 48,000 Americans – less than 2 percent of those who died in the United States in 2006. The 4,000 individuals with estates valued at $5 million or higher paid nearly half of the revenues received by the federal government.

One may wonder, then, why Bush has put so much of his political weight behind repealing a tax that affects so few Americans while the middle class has seen its relative tax burden increase during his time in office.

Bush may have answered that question himself when he told a group of some of the wealthiest people in America, Republican fundraising all-stars, that “you’re my base: the haves and the have mores.” It is entirely clear that Bush does not represent the lower and middle classes of this country. Instead, he works to serve Donald Trump and Paris Hilton.

Nowhere is the president’s love affair with the obscenely wealthy more apparent than in his submitted budget for the 2008 fiscal year. In it, Bush assumes a complete repeal of the estate tax, as well as the permanent extension of his own tax cuts. The estimated gap in government revenue from the elimination of the estate tax over the next 10 years is about $442 billion, just slightly less than our annual defense budget. What really shows off Bush’s love affair with Hilton and her ilk is how he plans to pay for it.

If the estate tax was eliminated,. the Walton family (heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune) would save nearly $32.7 billion over the next decade. Meanwhile, Medicare would see its budget slashed by $28 billion over the same time period.

The family at the head of the Mars candy corporation would stand to receive $11.7 billion in tax breaks. At the same time, the Veteran’s Administration (VA) would see its budget cut by $3.4 billion, a quarter of the colossal handout given to the candy conglomerate.

Headlines ran across the country last week about the horrid conditions that veterans returning from Iraq face at VA hospitals. The Bush administration’s solution? Cutting the VA budget. Talk about supporting our troops.

There are scores of more examples of wealthy families receiving huge tax breaks while vital social programs see their budgets slashed to ribbons. The Cox family (Cox Cable) would receive $9 billion in tax breaks while education budgets would be cut by $1.5 billion. The Nordstrom family, of department store fame, would receive $826 million in tax breaks.

Meanwhile, $420 million would be cut from programs that distribute heating oil to the poor.

Although Bush has made it clear throughout his presidency that he puts the interests of the mega-rich ahead of average Americans, his proposed 2008 budget is a perfect crystallization of that mindset. It demonstrates a failed presidency, one that has absolutely no hope of saving itself and has resigned to submitting budgets that have no hope of getting through Congress.

Democrats have already indicated that they will give Bush’s budget the exact same treatment that he proposed be given to the budgets of Medicare and the VA.

It’s not just liberals who see this budget as a colossal failure, either. According to The Washington Times, the shining example of unbiased, impartial journalism that it is, Bush’s 2008 budget continues a trend that has seen domestic governmental spending rise by 1.6 percent of the gross domestic product since 2000 and governmental revenues drop by 2.6 percent.

Bush’s budget isn’t a liberal one. or a conservative one. It is utterly irresponsible and designed to funnel more and more money to the super-rich, while cutting vital programs for ordinary Americans.

It’s why George Bush loves Paris Hilton.

Zach Austin is a political science junior and Mustang Daily political columnist.