Consider this an open letter to the Congressional “Super Committee,” or gang of twelve – whatever you may wish to call them. (Keep it clean out there!) While you are considering how best to shaft poor, elderly, and working people (employed and unemployed) to bring greater benefits to our nation’s rich, I ask – nay, demand – that you consider these items:
How we got here. I’ve heard a lot of people in Congress, as well as various talking heads, putting their spin on the orgy of ignorance that led us to the creation of your Committee, as well as the series of missteps that led us to Standard and Poor’s decision to downgrade the nation’s debt rating. The factual answer to those questions is simple – the Republican party, a wholly owned subsidiary 
of corporate America, was driven by its most radical faction (the so-called “tea party”) to manipulate the once mundane process of raising the debt ceiling for political gain. S&P’s judgment that our government can no longer make rational decisions about its debt is based on their recognition that, from now on, raising the debt ceiling will involve a similar political standoff.
The decision to politicize the debt ceiling legislation – really just an authorization to accommodate borrowing already mandated by Congress through the budget process – has done perhaps irreparable damage to the faith and credit of the U.S. But even more importantly, it has backed us into a political process that is practically guaranteed to deliver to the G.O.P. precisely what they want: the gutting of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Who owes what. I’m not happy with president Obama, but the notion that he and the Democrats are responsible for exploding deficit spending is ludicrous. As the New York Times reported recently, based on figures from the CBO and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, $1.44 trillion of the national debt can be laid at Obama’s door; more than $5 trillion is attributable to his predecessor, including the FY 2009 deficit of $1.44 trillion, set before Obama took office. The Bush tax cuts have contributed $1.8 trillion; unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have pitched in more than $1.4 trillion. How is this an issue of “entitlements” … unless that term can be used to describe tax cuts for wealthy people?
Seriously… (and apologies to Barney Frank) … are we going to ask 90-year-old ladies living on less than $20k to do without cost of living raises while allowing those who clear more than $250,000 a year to keep an extra $30 per thousand? I think not.
luv u,
jp
some of the legions of unemployed. They cling to this belief, rhetorically at least, even when it’s clear that a) businesses already have multiple trillions in savings they are sitting on right now, and b) they have no intention of spending any of it on new hires so long as they can press their current employees to do the work of three, four, perhaps more. Ask anybody who’s got a job, and they’ll tell you – increased productivity is just the modern term of art for speeding up the assembly line.
entail new spending. So we’ve reached a pass where budget items need to (a) win approval from both houses of Congress and be signed into law, (b) run the same gauntlet a second time in the form of appropriations bills, and (c) get past the blackmail play around raising the debt ceiling to cover funds already duly appropriated. This is why the G.O.P. wants to make the debt ceiling extension a two-step process – so that down the line, they can shake us down for more concessions. This is bogus as hell and should be denounced as such, every minute of every day.