By GREGORY N. HEIRES

DC 37 leaders attended a Washington conference to help map a counterattack.

As state and local governments struggle with their greatest fiscal crisis since the Great Depression, the Bush administration’s budget would devastate services and provide huge tax giveaways to the rich.

Alarmed by the attack on the public sector, DC 37’s national union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is fighting back.

Dozens of DC 37 leaders and activists attended AFSCME’s 2003 Legislative Conference in Washington March 17-19 to learn about Bush’s war on working families and to become soldiers in the counterattack.

“Within the next couple of months, Congress will decide where our country is headed,” said AFSCME President Gerald W. McEntee in his keynote address on March 17. “If the president’s fiscal plan is passed, there will be dire consequences at every level of government.”

During the conference, participants fanned out on Capitol Hill to meet with elected officials to denounce Bush’s agenda and to press for fiscal relief. AFSCME supports a plan sponsored by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and U.S. Rep. Olympia Snow (R-Maine) to provide states with $40 billion in fiscal relief.

To weigh in against the Bush plan, DC 37 members and retirees should contact their senators and representatives by calling 1-888-280-6279. Alternatively, you may visit the AFSCME Web site (www.afscme.org), which allows you to send an e-mail message to your senator or representative by typing in your zip code.

Bush’s proposed tax cut plan would:

• reduce taxes by more than $2.3 billion over the next 10 years: Millionaires would receive an average annual windfall of over $90,000, compared with middle-class Americans, who would receive an average of $256, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
• privatize as many as 850,000 federal jobs and under-fund the pay increases of civilian federal employees;
• create the largest budget deficit in history ($304 billion in fiscal year 2004);
• divert $2.7 trillion dollars over the next decade from health care, Social
  Security, education, homeland security and other national priorities.

The Bush plan also imposes mandated programs in many areas without providing the corresponding federal aid.

Reductions in mandatory programs for the poor, the elderly and veterans would amount to $265 billion over 10 years, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Another $210 billion for discretionary programs would be cut.

The total — $475 billion — is about equal to the proposed tax reduction for the top 1 percent of taxpayers, according to Jeff Madrick, an economist at Cooper Union. In New York, the president’s proposal to eliminate taxes on dividends would reduce revenue by $524 million.

“This administration proposes to downsize, outsource, contract out, privatize or just flat out stop supporting the services that support an improved quality of life for average Americans,” AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer William Lucy told the conferees.

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