What is in store for low-income Americans under a Bush Administration? What victories, if any, can progressives realistically hope to win?

President Bush's performance is already deeply troubling. So far he looks more like Ronald Reagan than President Bush I. Far-right ideologues are showing up in sub-Cabinet jobs, and little in Bush's substantive agenda cuts the other way. The Democratic opposition appears unable to gain traction. And a recession seems imminent, a prospect that lends special urgency to the fast-approaching time limits imposed by the 1996 welfare law.

The new Administration has proposed a tax cut that would wipe out the non-Social Security portion of the surplus and take us back to an era of deficits, lining the pockets of the rich and (shades of Reaganomics) making it impossible to find money for important social programs. Bush would do little for those in the lower middle and nothing at all for a large cohort at the bottom. He has put forward a "faith-based" initiative that raises serious constitutional questions and seems intended as the one solution to complex problems that in fact require multifaceted answers.

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