PERSPECTIVES ON THE FEDERAL BUDGET : Guts, Injustice and a Blow to Bubba : A Congress prepares to vote on the federal deficit-reduction and taxation package, some excerpts from commentary, pro and con: : Suffer the People

The Republicans and the Democrats agree on the budget agreement so it must be right, right? Wrong. In Africa, they say that when elephants dance, the grass gets trampled. In Washington, when politicians begin the bipartisan shimmy, the people begin to suffer.

This agreement isn’t fair. It takes away hope. It threatens our real security. When President Bush says the agreement demands sacrifice of everyone, he is talking about ham-and-egg justice. Remember the story of the children and the hog: They were each asked to contribute to a ham-and-egg sandwich. It sounded fair. The chicken agreed, dropped an egg and moved on. The hog rebelled, for he had to give a leg and couldn’t move on without pain. This agreement is ham-and-egg justice.

Republicans were prepared to bring down the government to protect the privileged. Democrats preferred agreement to failure. So the compromise puts the burden on lower- and middle-class working families. If you earn $40,000 a year, you will pay almost six times as high a share of your income in added taxes as will the wealthy. Poorer families will pay a rate 11 times greater. The corporations that have enjoyed enormous tax breaks over the last 10 years will continue to enjoy them. There is even a new tax shelter for the wealthy, worth an estimated $12 billion over five years.

This agreement is consistent with the past 10 years of bipartisan rule--it takes the ham from working people while asking the rich only for an egg or two. The spending cuts focus on health care for the elderly in the dusk of life, on education loans for students in the dawn of life. The effective five-year freeze on domestic spending robs people of hope--no hope for children dying for lack of infant medical care, no hope for students in schools that collapse around them, no hope for workers falling sick each day in unsafe workplaces and fouled environments.

Take the single issue of the $2-billion cut in student aid. High school students will give up hope and not apply to college. Those currently in college will be forced to leave. Small schools will close. One thing is assured. If we volunteer to not finance education, we will be forced to build jails.