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The budget President Bush delivered to Congress earlier this week includes the multi-trillion dollar tax cut that was the cornerstone of his run for the presidency and is the primary economic focus of his administration.

How do we pay for it?

A look at the fine print reveals that all too often, it's paid for out of funding for programs IBEW members and their families depend on.

Bush plans to shift $526 billion away from the Medicare trust fund over the next ten years, costing an additional $172.5 billion in lost interest payments.  This will deplete the trust fund 15 years earlier than projected, threatening the health security of seniors in IBEW families.  Bush's limited prescription drug plan falls far short of adequate coverage for IBEW families using Medicare.

Social Security will get 16.2% less than what is needed 10 years from now, making it clear that Bush intends upon moving ahead with private retirement accounts.  Moving money out of Social Security into private accounts can cost as much as $1 trillion in just ten years and require either cutting Social Security benefits or raising the retirement age in the future. Raising the retirement age is particularly unfair to IBEW members who do physically demanding jobs.  Yet, the shortfall would require raising the retirement age to 70 for workers now 35 and younger or reduce benefits.

Training and Employment Services programs at the Department of Labor are cut by 9.5%.  This will negatively affect more than 100,000 dislocated workers plus an additional 18,000 adults and 80,000 young people in worker education and training programs.

OSHA funding is frozen at current levels, which means that 94 full-time staff positions will be eliminated, endangering the Department's ability to enforce job safety standards.

The Labor Department's Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration funding is frozen.  After taking into account inflation, funding is actually cut by almost $3 million although there is a projected 22% increase in the number of enforcement and compliance field office inquiries.  That means important pension protections for the nation's workforce will not be as enforced in the future.

These are just a few of the known costs of the tax cut.  Other costs are not known.  How much more will it cost to service the national debt after the tax cut prevents it from being paid down as fast as current projections?   What's coming in the Defense Budget when the current review is finished?  Clearly, the total cost is yet to be tabulated.

Source: AFL-CIO

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AFL-CIO page separates rhetoric from reality. It tracks the actions of the Bush administration on working family issues.