It takes two to tango. That's true of the so-called budget debate. As they twirl and posture, President Bill Clinton and Congressional leaders keep shifting the "debate" toward proposals for deeper and deeper cuts in the basic social gains of working people.
Clinton denounces the "heartless" Republicans in Congress and poses as a defender of children, the elderly, and the poor. But that's like the fox in the chicken coop pointing at the wolf. Clinton, in fact, is not a lesser evil to the Republicans. Around the world, it has always been liberals (or social democrats) who, camouflaged by their rhetoric, have led the charge against workers' social wage.
True to form, the Democratic White House has been the driving force in the campaign to gut welfare. Clinton has set the tone since his 1992 election campaign vow to "end welfare as we know it."
The constantly changing figures cited by the big- business media can have a numbing effect. But the scope of the proposed cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs is staggering. Both Clinton and the Congressional Republicans have called for cuts of more than $600 billion in social spending over the next seven years. The latest White House proposal is to cut about $100 billion from Medicare alone.
This war on working people at home goes hand in hand with the U.S.-led drive toward war against the workers state of Yugoslavia. They are two sides of one coin, and are driven by the same profit crisis that has accelerated since the 1987 stock market crash. The plunging profit rates, which have sunk the capitalist world into depression conditions, are forcing capitalists in the United States, Britain, France, Japan, Germany, and elsewhere to battle more fiercely for markets worldwide and to push down the wages and social gains of workers in their own countries.
It is not a clear road for the bosses and their governments, however. Congress and the White House pushed a little too far in forcing hundreds of thousands of federal employees to work without pay. Washington's arrogance backfired as the workers held protests, forcing surprised government officials to back down.
This unexpected resistance is just a taste of the fightback the capitalist rulers will provoke among working people in the United States and other countries, who will defend the social rights they won through hard-fought struggles. That is exactly what happened in France with the massive strikes and demonstrations by millions of workers and students, which forced the Chirac-Juppé government to pull back from its assault on social security.
In parallel fashion, the imperialist assault on the Yugoslav workers state will run smack into resistance by working people there to any attempt at rolling back the social advances they won through their revolution.
To the bosses' cry to "balance the budget," we say: that's their budget and their problem, not ours. Their priority is to keep paying billions in interests to the rich bondholders - at the expense of workers and farmers. Our priority, as working people, is completely different: to defend the social conquests and basic needs of our class. Above all, the labor movement must wage a fight to win jobs for all through a shorter workweek with no cut in pay, a massive public works program, and affirmative action measures, including a raise in the minimum wage.
Today, the most important resistance to the threatened attacks on the social wage is taking place on the picket lines by the 2,000 Detroit newspaper strikers, the 30,000 striking janitorial workers in New York, and similar defensive struggles by working people from the United States to Puerto Rico to New Zealand. It is manifest in a range of other fights too, from numerous struggles against cop brutality to demonstrations in defense of a woman's right to abortion. That's where all working-class fighters should be today.