(Archive March 2006) Profiting Off the War and the Poor

By Danielle Reader

President Bush submitted his newest bud­get recently and cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid, while there is over $8.8 bil­lion missing in government contract payouts from the war in Iraq. His budget would cut $35.9 billion from Medicare, $4.5 billion from Medicaid, $14.7 billion on programs like food stamps and housing for the elderly, as well as $6.7 billion in educational pro­grams like the Pell Grants.

Adding insult to injury, CBS News re­cently aired a report on the highway rob­bery of the American taxpayers. According to their report, there are billions of dollars unaccounted for in contract payouts over in Iraq. There are two companies in particular that are among the worst.

One of these companies is called Custer Battles. Custer Battles scammed over $50 million from the American government for services they never provided. The only punishment for their fraud was a one-year suspension on government contracts, which has since expired. Why is it that this compa­ny got away with this? Well, the owner of the company, Scott Custer, just so happens to be a Republican who did fundraising work for President Bush.

The other company mentioned in this report was Halliburton. Halliburton has been awarded over half of all of the con­tracts of the entire Iraq war! Not only that but according to the Department of Defense auditors, Halliburton over billed the Ameri­can taxpayers by over $1 billion! When this was discovered Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan called for immediate congressional inquiries into where the missing money was but the Republican majority voted not to al­low any inquiries at all.

This is the biggest slap in the face to the American people that I can think of. In times of war people expect and deal with hard times. We understand that sacrifices sometimes need to be made but this is not the situation here. Why has nothing hap­pened to Halliburton? Well, the fact that Vice President Dick Cheney was once Vice President of Halliburton and is currently a majority shareholder doesn’t have anything to do with it, does it?

Some people feel as though social ser­vices such as Medicare and Grants for edu­cation are unimportant and shouldn’t be paid for with their taxes but would you rather the money go to a poor elderly person just try­ing to survive or a massive corporate giant like Halliburton?

Not only are these massive companies getting richer and richer off this war and us but then these same wealthy people are given tax breaks on things like capital gains. This is absolutely incomprehensible to me. President Bush has no care or consideration for the poor and working class in this coun­try. He continues to take from the weakest and neediest in order to keep giving to the richest.

I am a registered voter who pays my tax­es and I am sick and tired of hearing people claim that we have to cut these social services in order to financially survive. The amount of money that Custer Battles and Hallibur­ton have defrauded from the American gov­ernment would pay for the cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and educational grant programs.

These companies and the politicians who continue to support them are nothing but war profiteers. While they slash the funding to the weakest among us, they continue to line their own pockets. So when will people get angry and say enough is enough? Will it be when your elderly grandmother can’t get the medical care she desperately needs? Or will it be when you have to give up on your educational dreams because you can no longer get a grant? Or maybe when your children cannot get the proper medical care because there is nothing left of the Medicaid program? Maybe the reason things like this contin­ue to go on with out anyone screaming out in outrage is because the poor and weak usually have no voice. It is the rich and the power­ful that run our country and make decisions based on what is best for them. Unless you have had to be there yourself and struggle for the most basic things, then you have no idea how desperate the situation is. These are not just more cuts to unimportant services-these are vital programs that hard working, good taxpaying American citizens count on and deserve in their times of need.