The Big Squeeze

I just finished a cover story for this month's American Prospect magazine about how average Americans are getting squeezed in a whole host of economic areas. It is particularly relevant to today's release of a nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office report showing that the Bush tax policies have actually shifted more of the tax burden onto the middle class.

The bottom line: the major problem we face today is not necessarily that government spending is being cut (though that is a problem) - it is that the government no longer excercises its authority to regulate the market to protect average people. Laws that once protected the middle-class have either been gutted, or are going unenforced. And serious proposals to reverse that trend have been repeatedly shot down.

Read the story here.

More Selling Out to PhRMA

You may have heard about the Australian Free Trade deal the Bush administration just signed - it was a massive giveaway to the drug industry which funds the Bush campaign. Specifically, the Bush administration used the deal to force the Australian government to raise the price of medicine there. The trade pact also included provisions to impede future legislative efforts permitting seniors to reimport cheaper prescription drugs from Australia.

Now, just months later, news reports reveal that the top Bush administration trade officials who negotiated the deal are going to work for the health care and drug industries. Specifically, the Sydney Morning Herald reports Ralph Ives, assistant US trade representative for pharmaceutical policy, next month "becomes vice-president for global strategy at AdvaMed," a medical products industry group. Simiarly, Claude Burcky, who was Ives's head negotiator on the Australia deal, "is now director of global government affairs at the pharmaceutical company Abbott Laboratories." Not surprisingly, Abbott has already started to exploit the industry-backed patent provisions in the trade deal.

This is, of course, nothing new for the Bush administration. The White House has extremely close ties to the drug industry and allows it to continue charging Americans the highest prices for medicines in the world. For instance, Bush Medicare administrator Tom Scully immediately departed to become a health industry lobbyist after he made sure the new Medicare bill was a massive giveaway to the industries he was going to work for. The move raised still unanswered questions about whether Scully was actually negotiating the new lobbying job while still working on the Medicare bill.

Similarly, the White House has appointed key pharmaceutical industry figures to top positions that regulate that industry. For instance, Bush appointed Eli Lilly executive Mitch Daniels as his budget director from 2001-2003, "even though Daniels had no full-time job experience related to the federal budget." During Daniel's tenure, the White House took the extraordinary step of attaching provisions protecting Eli Lilly from lawsuits to the bill creating the Department of Homeland Security.

Bush also hired Daniel Troy as chief counsel for the FDA, despite the fact that he represented Pfizer as a lawyer. Under Troy's leadership, FDA is intervening in court to block liability lawsuits against drug makers.

Even the international AIDS fund is not immune to the Bush-pharmaceutical industry nexis. Bush nominated Ex-Eli Lilly CEO Randall Tobias to manage the international fund. Under Tobias, U.S. funds to fight AIDS are only allowed to buy brand-name drugs from the major pharmaceutical companies. The decision effectively shuts out cheaper generic medicines that could be provided immediately to the developing world.

Where is Bush's Outrage Now?

THEN:

On 7/14/92, the Washington Post reported that George W. Bush wrote a letter on behalf of his father's presidential campaign to 85,697 campaign contributors condemning a similar smear operation against Bill Clinton and encouraging those donors not to contribute to the effort.

NOW:

Unlike Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), President Bush refuses to repudiate an ad sponsored by his own top donors that slanders John Kerry's war record, without proof. Even though the ad has been discredited by non-partisan sources, and veterans in the ad itself, Bush has stayed silent.

THEN & NOW: Bush on Tax Enforcement

THEN:
“[I want] to make sure that tax cheaters are found, make sure the IRS gets after those who don't pay taxes; make sure that the system is fair for those of us who do pay taxes. We want everybody paying their fair share.”
- George W. Bush, 4/15/04

NOW:
“The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway.”
- George W. Bush, 8/9/04

At least he's telling us the truth now about his attitude toward his rich friends ripping off the government, while the rest of us get stuck having to pay our fair share. Not surprisingly, under Bush audits of wealthy corporations have dropped, while audits of individuals and working families have increased.