In Their Own Words: Under Cover of Katrina, Right-Wing Opportunism

“Bush has what Social Security and tax reform lacked: a real sense of crisis that places his political opponents in an awkward position. He can make demands in the name of New Orleans, including demands for substantive policy changes that he could never obtain in the absence of a crisis.”
- Tod Lindberg, Washington Times, Sept 20, 2005

As the nation reeled in shock at the destruction of lives and communities wrought by Hurricane Katrina, Americans from all political perspectives came together behind the mission of helping the victims and rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Sadly, however, it seems that a few influential right-wing think tanks, pundits, and legislators see the devastation as a “golden opportunity” (in the words of Jack Kemp) to push through long-sought components of an aggressive and regressive economic and political agenda. Controversial proposals and program cuts that have failed to pass muster in calmer times are now being prescribed as supposedly necessary measures during a period of national crisis.

Blaming the Safety Net: An “Entitlement Mentality”

Countless right-wing pundits quickly blamed the tragic aftermath of Katrina—and the glaring portrait of American poverty the hurricane revealed—on the remaining programs of the social safety net, or what Craig Smith described as “the psychological consequences of the modern welfare state.” Radio extremist Rush Limbaugh lashed out at what he called an “entitlement mentality,” and the editors of the right-wing Washington Times purported to observe a “malfeasance of citizenship” that was “largely the product of a mental state of dependency induced by deliberate government policy.”

Others went further, blaming government itself for even purporting to have a role in mitigating the catastrophe: Daniel Henninger, a Wall Street Journal columnist, wrote, “Big public bureaucracies are going to get us killed. They already have.” And Edwin J. Fuelner, president of the right-wing Heritage Foundation, blamed “onerous federal regulations,” rather than lack of initiative or funding, for preventing the building of levees in New Orleans.

An “Unprecedented Opportunity” for a Radical Agenda

Michael Franc (also of Heritage) summed up the operating assumptions of the economic right like this: “Conservatives at the Heritage Foundation and elsewhere have advocated that any recovery package begin with the understanding that the liberal social welfare programs of the last century failed the poor in every imaginable way.” He added that “the unique circumstances created by Katrina” are an “unprecedented opportunity” to push for radical changes.

The strategy of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress for the past five years has been to starve the government of revenue necessary for investment to maintain our schools, maintain and expand the availability of affordable housing, provide health care for low-income and uninsured people, provide Head Start for every eligible low-income child, and a host of other critical domestic needs. Indeed, during the Bush administration, federal tax revenues as a share of the economy have fallen to their lowest level since 1959. Declining federal revenues have led to federal spending levels that will remain lower in 2005, as a share of the economy, than in any year between 1975 and 1996.

The number of people in poverty has grown, the number of uninsured people has grown, wages have remained stagnant for a record period of time, and the minimum wage has not been increased since 1997. Low-income families have not only been the victims of Bush administration policies that contribute to their poverty, but they have also been victims of an administration unprepared and incapable to activate the federal government on their behalf in a time of crisis. Having succeeded at starving programs that would help low-income people, leaving them ill prepared to defend themselves against the ravages of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) had the audacity to write that the devastation of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita “introduced a valuable forum to promote the triumph of our ideas and solutions for government over the crumbling and outdated policies of the Democrat-controlled Congresses of past decades.”

More bluntly, Washington Times columnist Tod Lindberg expressed the sense on the right that there is an opening for exploitation of the tragedy, writing, “Bush has what Social Security and tax reform lacked: a real sense of crisis that places his political opponents in an awkward position. He can make demands in the name of New Orleans, including demands for substantive policy changes that he could never obtain in the absence of a crisis.”

A Right-Wing “Wish List”

One special report from the Heritage Foundation, with Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese as lead author, cautioned against “catering to the wish lists of cities, parishes or counties, states, and stakeholders.” But both before and after President Bush officially endorsed the creation of a “Gulf Opportunity Zone”— the meaning of which is still unclear — Heritage and other right-wing activists have been scrambling to fill it with their own “wish list” of right-wing policies, many of which have a distinctly familiar ring.

The Meese report called for the creation of a so-called “Emergency Board” to identify and remove industrial regulations, including environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, financial regulations (to avoid “paperwork”), and worker protections like the Davis-Bacon Act, which mandates that federal contracts pay prevailing wages. Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a foe of both regulations and organized labor, commented that the immediate gutting of worker protections is necessary because “[u]nions have never hesitated to line their own pockets with extra taxpayer dollars, especially at the expense of lower-skilled workers.”

Tort reform is also high on the list, as is a massive privatization effort—from school vouchers to private toll roads to flood insurance to health savings accounts. A Heritage report cried hollowly that “Katrina’s victims deserve better than Medicaid,” the existing health safety-net program, a perpetual target of conservatives, and advised states to limit enrollment to “those survivors who were previously eligible.” Instead, “[s]tates should be able to use their Medicaid funds” to pay for private insurance. Free Enterprise Fund chairman Mallory Factor called for revival of moribund Social Security-privatization efforts, claiming “[t]heir importance has increased, not diminished, because of the hurricane.”

“As for the levees, they are too important to entrust to Washington bureaucrats,” Factor later wrote. Calling for Congress to “pare back the tentacles of Leviathan” and “pursue an agenda based on the principles of free enterprise,” he practically swooned, “The possibilities are limited only by our imagination.”

“Blueprints” Ready and Waiting

But the most prominent theme of the emerging “wish list” is a familiar refrain: tax cuts. While celebrity billionaire Steve Forbes festively called for a ten-year “tax holiday”, most proposed cuts are more specialized. These controversial tax policies, which were being advanced through legislation before Katrina—such as eliminating the estate tax on the largest estates, making Bush’s upper-bracket tax cuts permanent (including two cuts for the affluent scheduled to take effect January 1, which could cost $200 billion in the next ten years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities), and overall “reform” of the tax code, in ways that are as yet undefined—are now presented as critical. Jack Kemp, the former vice-presidential candidate who is now co-chairman of the right-wing advocacy group FreedomWorks, as well as honorary co-chairman of the Free Enterprise Fund, tellingly hinted that the “blueprints” for a “simplified reformed system of taxation” are “well developed and could be enacted into law in short time.”

And one of the most popular right-wing wishes is the abolition of the capital gains tax. Yet another special report from the Heritage Foundation proclaimed that “the heart of [Gulf Opportunity Zone] tax relief must be a zero capital gains tax.” Kemp declared absurdly that “the capital gains tax is not a tax on the rich, it's a tax on the poor who want to get rich.”

Although some of the proposals on the “wish list” are designed to take advantage of the “Gulf Opportunity Zone,” they are proposals the right-wing has long pushed for the whole nation, unsuccessfully. As Steve Forbes makes clear, the long-term goal is “making the entire country a true free-enterprise zone.”

“Operation Offset”

Kemp added that the extensive tax cuts listed above are, by his calculation, “[t]he only rational way to pay for the current emergency,” but most right-wing personalities have other ideas, as well.

American Conservative Union chairman David Keene, claiming that “spending was already spiraling out of control” before Katrina, called for a “reprioritizing” of the federal budget. Mallory Factor, writing that “the crisis is a reason for the government to tighten its belt,” hails what members of the House Republican Study Committee (RSC) call “Operation Offset”—a 23-page list of government programs that the committee would like to cut.

The targets of “Operation Offset,” or “RSC Budget Options 2005” (pdf), range from NASA to waste disposal, but even a cursory reading reveals programs which the right-wing has been trying to cut or eliminate for years, even decades, such as:

• The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds PBS and NPR;
• The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities;
• Legal Services Corporation, which provides legal representation for the poor;
• Amtrak;
• AmeriCorps;
• The Presidential Election Campaign Fund, which is funded optionally on individual tax forms;
• Funds for the District of Columbia; and
• Family planning services for the poor under Title X.

Other programs on the block include school lunches, student loans, the Earned Income Tax Credit, community-development block grants, and several projects dealing with energy conservation, fuel efficiency, and alternative fuels. In addition to postponing the president’s Medicare prescription drug benefit for one year, the RSC proposes to “save” nearly $450 billion in Medicaid and Medicare costs simply by shifting those costs to states and individuals, calling it “Tough Choices in Tough Times.”

What has changed since, for example, the most recent unsuccessful attempt to defund PBS, in June of this year? After Katrina, according to RSC chair Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), “[t]he only thing that’s changed is everything.”

Although congressional leadership has yet to take up this “reprioritizing,” the right wing is gushing over “Operation Offset.” Former House majority leader Dick Armey (R-TX), currently the co-chair of FreedomWorks, called it a “bold step,” and Grover Norquist—who once said he wanted to cut government “to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”—called the list “groundbreaking.” Even Family Research Council president Tony Perkins endorsed the list, saying, “True 'compassionate conservatism' should address not only how much to spend to help rebuild, but how to spend wisely.”

“The Dawn of a Great Era”

Just days after the mayor of New Orleans issued a “desperate SOS” for his city, Jack Kemp wrote that the disaster provided a “golden opportunity” for “imagining the unimaginable.” Michael Franc of the Heritage Foundation later mused: “'This could be the dawn of a great era of conservative governance.”

The feverish daydreams of the right wing—to shirk the responsibilities of the government to all its citizens and to shrink it to “the size where we can drown it in the bathtub”—have never been a secret, but neither have they been fully adopted under conditions that lent themselves to calm reflection. As the nation has its mind and heart focused on the Gulf Coast, now is certainly not the time to sneak through an extreme ideologically driven economic agenda that would sacrifice the well being of many Americans. On the contrary— the government must concentrate on rebuilding the lives and communities torn apart by Katrina and Rita, on the path of consensus, not opportunism.