Oblivious in D.C.
By Bob Herbert

Those who still believe that the policies of the Bush administration will set in motion some kind of renaissance in Iraq should take a look at what's happening to the quality of life for ordinary Americans here at home.

The president, buoyed by the bountiful patronage of the upper classes, seems indifferent to the increasingly harsh struggles of the working classes and the poor.

As Mr. Bush moves from fund-raiser to fund-raiser, building the mother of all campaign stockpiles, states from coast to coast are reaching depths of budget desperation unseen since the Great Depression. The disconnect here is becoming surreal. On Thursday the National Governors Association let it be known that the fiscal crisis that has crippled one state after another is worsening, not getting better.

Taxes have been raised. Services have been cut. And the rainy day funds accumulated in the 1990's have been consumed. If help does not materialize soon — in the form of assistance from the federal government or a sharp turnaround in the economy — some states will fall into a fiscal abyss.
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Some Americans are missing meals and going without their medicine, while others are enjoying a surge in already breathtaking levels of wealth. So what are we doing? We're cutting aid to the former while showering government largess on the latter.

There's a reason those campaign millions keep coming and coming and coming.

A Times article last week noted that the wealthiest 400 taxpayers accounted for more than 1 percent of all the income in the United States in 2000, "more than double their share just eight years earlier."
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