Nicholas F. Benton's White House Report:

Is everyone paying attention to the impact of the Bush Administration's second term taxing and budget priorities on small businesses and their employees, as well as the poor and the middle class, in general, and the environment?

Proposed policy shifts impacting small business are just more evidence of the amazing redistribution of wealth that this administration will continue to orchestrate for another four years. A friend, a CPA, suggested the term, "redistribution of wealth," may be a better characterization of Bush's agenda than "tax cuts for the rich," because it suggests far more than just tax cuts.

Among other things, it involves "socking it to" the little guy by measures such as "eliminating tax exemptions." That way, Bush gets away with heaping a greater burden onto, for example, small businessmen while not getting accused of raising their taxes.

Two measures reported just this week are evidence of this: The first is the austerity budget passed by Congress that includes the elimination of subsidies to the Small Business Administration's loan program. The second is Bush's intention to overhaul the tax code over the next couple of years by, for example, eliminating the business tax deduction for employer-provided health insurance. Bush is supposed to name a bipartisan committee to mull "fundamental tax reform" such as the measure just mentioned. Nothing is yet decided, but the proposal has been floated.

Another way of "socking it to" the middle class without making it look like a tax increase would be to eliminate the deduction of state and local taxes from federal income tax returns. While that would hit everyone across the board, eliminating the deduction for employer-provided health insurance would be particularly cruel, and would result in countless more Americans being without health insurance. Businesses are already finding too many ways to avoid providing any benefits for employees, and this one would represent a major incentive to deny health coverage.

In fact, one can imagine that the mere mention of this proposal will begin to deter small businesses that do not already offer the benefit from considering offering health insurance to employees.

But now that Bush intends to spend his "considerable political capital" during his second term, it's not just your savings, your house and your cow that he's after, but try your first-born, as well. The administration's thirst for military adventure is moving with a noxious certainty toward a universal draft to prosecute an array of wars that could easily flare into a really big one.

While the Falluja offensive in Iraq only further reminds us of the kind of guerilla, insurgent war U.S. forces are now trapped in, and while Sen. John McCain told NBC television Sunday that at lease 50,000 more troops need to be sent over immediately "to prevent the insurgents from filtering back in," press reports indicate the Bush administration is mulling military strikes aimed at forcing "regime change" in both Iran and North Korea. Such moves would have severe repercussions for U.S. relations with China, among other countries.

The London Observer reported that Pentagon officials "are said to be discussing possible military action to neutralize Iran's nuclear weapons threat." Rather than targeting nuclear facilities with air strikes, however, the Pentagon is contemplating air strikes directed toward regime change, "including attacks on the leadership, as well as on political and security targets."

The lack of clear intelligence about where key components of the Iranian nuclear program are located has led to a "new modeling" at the Pentagon, according to the report, and the shift from targeting nuclear sites to political target lists "is said to be causing deep anxiety among officials in Britain, France and Germany who last week appeared to have negotiated a deal with Teheran to cease work that could contribute to a nuclear weapons program. Washington is said to be skeptical about the deal."

Meanwhile, in the view of the Asian Times, a rare fax from William Kristol, chair of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC) to opinion makers around Washington, D.C., last week, entitled, "Toward Regime Change in North Korea," signaled that a push is now underway by Bush administration hawks to that end. Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld are on the PNAC board.

Such a move would threaten to alienate, at best, China and South Korea, according to the report. Both are staunchly opposed to a harder U.S. line toward Pyongyang and its nuclear program, warning of "grave repercussions."

Nicholas Benton may be emailed at nfbenton@fcnp.com