In his final years in office, President Bill Clinton spoke of building a bridge to the 21st century to lead America into a prosperous future. To that end, he crafted economic policies that bequeathed to our nation historically low interest rates and a $250 billion surplus, which we could have used for any number of things: shoring up the solvency of Medicare and Social Security, improving the country’s infrastructure or paying down the national debt, to name a few.

Instead, President George W. Bush blew the cash on a tax cut for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. A report released by Citizens for Tax Justice shows that in Illinois, one-third of the tax cut went to individuals earning more than $1 million a year, while the poorer half of Illinoisans received less than $100 apiece in 2003. Meanwhile, Bush launched an enormously expensive war that has cost you and every taxpayer more than $1,500 each – with no end in sight. The tax cuts represent a massive looting of the American middle class and threaten to increase the already gaping chasm between rich and poor to 19th-century levels.

Furthermore, the president continues to run up the biggest deficits in our country’s history. When the government borrows money, it shrinks the available pool of credit for the rest of us, raising the cost of financial services such as auto financing and mortgage lending. Instead of collecting a fair share of taxes from the mega-rich and big corporations to pay for what the government spends, the president is giving away cash by the fistful to his cronies while running up the biggest credit-card bill in our nation’s history. Why would Republicans, the self-professed party of fiscal responsibility, be so reckless with our money?

Perhaps part of the answer lies with influential anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist. “I don’t want to abolish government,” Norquist said. “I just want to get it down to the size where I can drown it in a bathtub.”

And that, in a nutshell, is the mind-set behind the tax cuts. The radical Republicans in the White House want to bankrupt the government to ensure that it’s too weak to do anything but provide military defense and enforce property rights. A government too weak to do anything but wage war is a government too weak to interfere in the affairs of corporate America. As a bonus, by starving the government of tax revenue, these radical Republicans finally will secure the death of the New Deal – last month, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, warned that Social Security might not last long enough to take care of the Baby Boom generation as they age into their golden years. The notion that the richest country in the world may not be able to take care of its weakest citizens is an affront to human dignity.

Are you better off now than you were four years ago? The 1.3 million Americans who fell into poverty last year aren’t. The two million Americans who have lost their jobs aren’t. If you truly believe that four more years of Bushonomics will be good for the country, well then, I’ve got a bridge I’d like to sell you.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.