Here was something that caught my ear during the president’s remarks this morning :

And at the same time, our coalition is helping to improve the daily lives of the Iraqi people. The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay, so we are rebuilding more than a thousand schools. The old regime starved hospitals of resources, so we have helped to supply and reopen hospitals across Iraq. The old regime built up armies and weapons while allowing the nation’s infrastructure to crumble, so we are rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports.

Hmmm…let’s examine that one, shall we??

“The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay…”

Now let me see if I get this right: Over the last year, the President and Congress have come up with trillions - trillions! — for tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the rich…hundreds of billions in new money for the Pentagon…tens of billions for the airlines and corporate bailouts…and - most recently - a whopping $180 billion for farmers. And they dare to tell us: sorry, there is no new money left for public education and struggling schools.

Education, it seems, is one of those faith-based programs. Which means lots of photo ops with schoolchildren. Lot’s of compassionate rhetoric. But when it comes to new federal funding, public schools haven’t got a prayer!

“The old regime starved hospitals of resources…”

Both the National Governors Association and the Bush administration are working on proposals to convert Medicaid to a “block grant” program. If either proposal is enacted, the federal government will acquire substantial leeway to sharply curtail spending on Medicaid.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that if large-scale cuts in Medicaid are enacted, up to 1.7 million people nationwide will lose Medicaid coverage and become uninsured. Millions more will face significant reductions in benefits. Efforts to cover more low-income children will be stopped in their tracks.

“The old regime built up armies and weapons…”

HERE ARE THE stark numbers. The original defense budget for fiscal year 2004 was $400 billion. Bush’s supplemental request for Iraq and Afghanistan, which he announced last Sunday on television, is $87 billion, for a total of $487 billion. Let’s be conservative and deduct the $21 billion of the supplemental that’s earmarked for civil reconstruction (even though the Defense Department is running the reconstruction). That leaves $466 billion.

By comparison, in constant 2004 dollars (adjusted for inflation), the U.S. defense budget in 1985, the peak of the Cold War and Ronald Reagan’s rearmament, totaled $453 billion. That was $12 billion to $33 billion less than this year’s budget (depending on whether you count reconstruction). In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, the budget amounted to $428 billion. That’s $38 billion to $59 billion below Bush’s request for this year.
. . .
The $87 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan is fairly straightforward: $32.3 billion for operations and maintenance, $18.5 billion for personnel, $1.9 billion for equipment, $5 billion for security, $15 billion for infrastructure, and so on. It’s a bookkeeping calculation: If you want to continue the mission, that’s what it costs; if you want to spend less, you have to downgrade the mission.

But there’s plenty more in the military budget that does not have the slightest connection to any clear and present (or even murky and distant) danger.

“…while allowing the nation’s infrastructure to crumble…”

Premise for the debate we deserve: This is the decade, after our serious ’80s and ’90s relapse in spending for basic infrastructure, to make the grand investments that will pay off for decades in increased productivity.

How about a big investment in energy conservation technologies in view of the California and Western shortages? Or how about the list of nearly $1 trillion in overdue infrastructure from the ’90s?

The wish list included $360 billion to fix deteriorating highways and bridges; $72 billion to improve mass transit systems; as much as $60 billion to expand and modernize airports; $112 billion to bring America’s seriously aging, insufficient supply of public schools up to minimum standards; $138 billion over 20 years to update crumbling, local, water-supply systems; and $139 billion for wastewater systems over 20 years.

Or why not move now to offset our constantly worsening highway gridlock and airport winglock by investing $10 billion to $20 billion a year in a first-class, national, rapid-rail network that connects our major urban centers on exclusive rights of way, emulating the superb systems in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere?

Despite the stock market’s recent fall, contends Jim RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative, “We are living in the wealthiest society, in the wealthiest land, in the history of planet Earth. If we don’t build our infrastructure now, when will we?”

So here’s the question : When contrasted with the plethora of domestic budget cuts to make way for tax cuts for the wealthy, does my opposition to the vast amount of money Bush wants to spend in Iraq make me more of a “terrorist sympathizer” or a “class warrior”? Just curious…