The newly enacted tax bill will add, by the most conservative estimate, 1.5 trillion dollars to the U.S. deficit. This was a huge setback for the ruling class. Many of their own politicians put their personal financial and political interest to staying in office ahead of the needs of the main wing bosses to prepare for war.
The politicians lack of discipline is a forewarning of more fascist measures on the horizon. The main wing ruling class response will try to force individual bosses, politicians, and the working class to fall in line on their march towards war.
Tax bill & infighting
In a blatant attempt to buy votes in the 2018 elections, the tax bill will give a small bump in take-home pay to a large section of the working class. The meat of the bill however is a massive reduction in the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent. Unlike the personal tax cuts which will expire in 2025, the corporate cuts are permanent. The bill depended on the votes of main wing Republicans like Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitch McConnell serving their personal interests in doing so.
The Tea Party domestic capitalists have shown little to no interest in keeping the U.S. top dog in the world. Their goal in supporting the tax bill is to set the stage for massive cuts to social welfare programs, making this bill a large-scale attack on the working class.
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan has already announced that the GOP plans to cut federal health care and anti-poverty programs because of a deficit that his party is about to balloon. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform,” he said on a talk-radio show, “which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit (Atlantic 12/19/17).
This is a volatile situation. The liberal bosses fear those cuts will increase the political problems for the ruling class in trying to win people to go along with a large-scale war and draft. The infighting will likely lead to the development of fascism in the U.S., most probably under the leadership of the liberals who are desperate to keep up with growing Chinese imperialism.
War looms
As the U.S. bosses have ceded ground to Russia in the Middle-East and China in Asia, war looms as the only path for the desperate U.S. bosses to try to regain their world dominance. War demands the U.S. beef up its military to stay ahead of the Chinese and be able to fight a multi-front war as well as repair the U.S.’s crumbling infrastructure.
Neither of these can happen without huge amounts of money being taken from the working class. The disarray evident in the fight over the tax bill will make that more difficult for the main wing bosses creating a very volatile situation within the U.S. ruling class.
Military might of China
The Chinese have significantly trailed the U.S. from a military stand point. That is changing pretty rapidly. Beside the construction of several new bases on man-made islands in the South China Sea, the Chinese imperialists are investing heavily in a military that can greatly expand its sphere of operations.
The late draft of the annual report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission contains a chapter on Beijing’s power projection development…
China is building military capabilities to deal with hostile air, surface, and subsurface operational environments in the ‘far seas,’ … the operations expand the focus beyond the two island chains off China’s eastern and southern coasts.
Given its enhanced strategic lift capability, strengthened employment of special operations forces, increasing capabilities of surface vessels and aircraft, and more frequent and sophisticated experience operating abroad, China may also be more inclined to use force to protect its core interests”(Nationalinterest.org 11/7/2016).
Failing U.S. infrastructure
A problem even bigger than the challenge posed by China’s military growth is the rapidly deteriorating infrastructure within the U.S. The bosses are trillions of dollars short in repairing the basic systems that keep the country functioning. Expansion of infrastructure to serve a major war would necessitate new roads, rail, bridges, ports, airports and the infrastructure necessary to facilitate a draft. That means trillions of more dollars that the bosses will need.
The working class has no champions among any of the bosses. We must build a communist movement to fight our way out of this mess on our own. The domestic oriented Tea Party bosses seek to starve us. Democratic Party led fascism, with a diverse face is an equally bad and more powerful threat to the working class. Liberal led world war is on the horizon as the bosses prepare by building a mass movement to try to discipline the rogue bosses and politicians and lead the attacks on the working class across the globe.