The Republican's Hubris

Forget about the social inequities of the Republican budget plan ... how in typical Republican fashion it takes from the poor and the worker, and this time even the elderly, and gives to the rich ... what I find mind-boggling is the House passage of their budget blueprint with no committee hearings and virtually no debate.   

This is one of the most important legislative documents in many years.   In its details it will go nowhere.   But in the scope of its bottom line insistence on restoring the country to fiscal sanity and soundness, it most definitely sets the target for deficit reduction that any other plan will be held up to.  No wimpish effort will be acceptable.

Without the Republican's throwing down the gauntlet, it's quite possible that no political force would have risen to tackle this most serious national problem.  Certainly President Obama was not forthcoming on the issue when he prepared his 2012 budget, being more concerned with his re-election campaign.   As I said in a previous post, his lack of leadership on this issue has been very disappointing.  

But now that the Republicans have given him political cover, he has come up with his own plan, which it's reported borrows heavily from the recommendations of the bipartisan commission he appointed on cutting the deficit.  Members of the Senate are reportedly also busy devising their own plan.

Commendable as their effort may thus be from this perspective, the process they have followed makes a mockery of considered government.  The Republicans of 2011 are no different than the Gingrich Republicans of 1995 ... they are consumed by a hubris that will result in their graceless defeat at the hands of the very voters that lifted them to power.  In that respect, I am grateful for their hubris.

Why Do Workers, Children, and the Poor Get Stuck With the Bill?

Today’s New York Times carried an article indicating that many states were trying to partially solve their budget crises by cutting back on direct aid to major cities and local government.  This of course will result in one of several things … decreased local services to people who need services, increased layoffs/unemployment, or, less likely, increased property taxes.

So at the Federal level, Republicans want to cut the budget by slashing domestic programs which are supplying needed services to the American worker, the poor and their families.  The states are cutting their budgets by also cutting needed services, reducing salaries and benefits for public service workers, and cutting aid to local government, which will have the impact noted above.

The cumulative impact of this method of addressing admittedly serious budget problems at the federal, state, and local levels will be to exacerbate the effects of poverty, to harm children, and to increase unemployment, which will in turn hurt the economic recovery.  This is not a rational response by government.   But then, rarely have so many of the people with power in government (of course I’m referring to Republicans) been less rational and more ideological.

If anyone, including President Obama, had any guts and true leadership ability, the federal government would have followed some version of the recommendations made by the several nonpartisan/bipartisan commissions on reducing the deficit.  While they differed in details, they all had these points in common.  Given the size of the budget reduction needed, cuts need to be made in all areas of government, including defense, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and appropriate taxes needed to be raised. 

Only through this combination of austerity measures will the pain be shared by all.   This approach would also allow the application of a “needs” test, resulting in those who can afford more contributing more to the budget reduction.  The weakest members of our society should not have to bear the brunt of the load.

Under the American social contract, all citizens are in this boat together, and each is responsible for contributing to the cause according to his ability … with rights and riches comes a concomitant responsibility.  That is why the income tax is a progressive tax, with higher incomes paying a higher percentage. 

That basic tenet, which was developed under both Republican and Democratic progressive administrations in the early years of the 20th century, seems to have been relegated to the dustbin of history by the current Republican anti-government credo and by the new power elite who seem to have no sense of social obligation towards their fellow citizens.

William Jennings Bryan once famously said, “You shall not crucify labor upon a cross of gold.”  I would paraphrase that and say, “You shall not crucify the poor, children, and workers upon a cross of subsidies for business and tax breaks for the rich.”

Make Proposed Budget Cuts Transparent for the American People

Believe it or not, but the American people have not been told the impact of the proposed $61 billion budget cuts recently passed by the House of Representatives.  Yes, they’ve been told that health, education, and safety will be impacted, and that some jobs will be lost, but they’ve been given very few specifics to react to.

So today I tried to find out what that impact would be.  To my shock and dismay, I found that there was no … I repeat … no source that answered that question.   No newspaper, no magazine, no government report, no Democratic Party position paper … nothing.   I searched the Internet in vain.  All I could find were the same vague statements being repeated over and over again.

And so I went digging for specifics.  Here’s what I could find:

Veterans:

            $75 million      Would deprive 11,000 homeless veterans of vouchers for housing

Children:

            In total, programs benefiting children are cut 21%

            $330 million    Health

            $2.6  billion     Education … for example, significant cuts are made in Head Start

                                        and other early education efforts that would cause 368,000 children

                                        to lose early education slots.  These cuts will also cause many

                                        Head Start programs to close and many teachers to lose their jobs.

            $139 million    Youth Training

            $3.5  billion     Housing subsidies

            $30   million    Safety

            $782 million    Nutrition, mostly from the successful WIC (Women with Infant

                                        Children) program

Food and Health Safety:

            $1.3  billion     cuts from FDA, FSIS, and CDC budgets.  These cuts will iimpact

                                        everything from the number of federal meat inspectors ($53

                                        million) to dollars spent to control the spread of HIV.

Border and Immigration

            $600 million

The bill would also completely eliminate federal funding for a host of programs including Americorps, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting  (NPR and PBS), and Planned Parenthood. 

The number of jobs .. both government (federal, state, and local) and private … that would be lost as a result of the $61 billion in budget cuts has been estimated as high as 700,000.  Needless to say, any sizeable increase in unemployment will hurt the economy and hurt families.

And this is just the tip of the iceberg.  WHY hasn’t the Democratic Party or any news organization put together this vital information, preferably in a comprehensible form, so that the people can see what is happening and voice their opposition … if indeed they are opposed … to their representatives in Congress?

Remember that 2-years extension of the Bush tax cuts for those earning more than $250,000 that the Republicans insisted on and the Democrats opposed.  That tax cut added $100 billion to the deficit for just that 2-year period.  But the Republicans won’t consider the impact of tax cuts on the deficit.  This is a clear example how they give to the rich and take from the poor and workers.  For them, there is no shared sacrifice.

If ever there is a need for effective communication, that time is now!

Obama’s Budget – Where Is the Leader We Elected?

Everyone … well almost everyone … agrees that the United States’ budget deficit is something that must be addressed now if we want to maintain the financial stability of this country.  And everyone also agrees that given the size of the projected deficits, the net reduction on a yearly basis needs to be huge.

Three different nonpartisan/bipartisan groups came out with reports several months ago about how to reduce the deficit.   While they differed in their details, they were all consistent in that any serious effort must combine cuts in all areas, including especially defense, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, as well as selective tax increases.  

Without that breadth of cuts combined with tax increases, there would be no way of cutting the deficit sufficiently while apportioning the resulting sacrifice in a just way.  The pain of austerity needs to be shared by all while limiting its impact on the weakest in our society.

The Republicans, who are serious about cutting the deficit, have put entitlements and defense cuts off the table, they have put tax increases off the table, and they have declared that the impact of tax cuts on the deficit would not be considered.  Given the size of their proposed cuts, this is a prescription for massive pain primarily for workers and the poor.  The sacrifice would not be a shared one.

And what has President Obama proposed in his 2012 budget?  A timid approach to cuts combined with increased investments in various areas resulting in an admittedly insufficient attack on the deficit.  What he said was that any moves to tackle cuts to the entitlements would have to be bipartisan.  Defense seems to be pretty much off the table for him too.

Where is the leader that we elected?  Where is the change that we want?  With the backing of the three studies on how to reduce the deficit, the President would have had good cover to put forward a bold budget that incorporated many of their suggestions.

Had he done so, he then could have said to the Republicans, “Your way is not the American way …it is not the fair and just way to reduce the deficit.  My proposal is a proposal for shared sacrifice across the entire spectrum of America’s populace and business community, incorporating a “means” test:  those that can most afford it sacrifice the most; those that can least afford it sacrifice the least.”

That is what I would have expected from the President.  That is what needs to happen to move the debate forward in a constructive fashion.  Are there people left in the halls of power who will rise to the occasion?

Robin Hoods in Reverse – Republicans Take From the Poor and Give to the Rich

 I don’t know how the Republicans get away with it.  In the budget cutting debates, they keep saying that people must sacrifice because the situation is so serious.   That statement is fine in the abstract.

But why is it that all the sacrifice that they are proposing is going to come from workers and the poor.  Whether its as beneficiaries of the domestic programs and services that are being gutted or public service workers whose collective bargaining rights they want to end, the sacrifice is coming from those who can least afford it.  And since these cuts will hurt state and local economies and increase unemployment, they will receive a double whammy.

Meanwhile, the rich and near rich … who have done very nicely during the financial crisis … aren’t being asked to sacrifice anything.  Instead, they get tax cuts!  Whatever happened to the concept of "shared sacrifice?"

When are the people in this country, including those in the Republican base who are not well off, going to rise up and tell these jokers, “Enough! You do not have a mandate to do us harm.  If there must be sacrifice, it must be apportioned justly.”  They need to hear from the people.

The Republicans Need a Reality Check

If ever there was a time for the silent majority to rise up and let itself be heard, it is now. 

The loudest group in the United States over the past two years has been the Tea Party.  Through its concerted activism it has managed to change the complexion of contemporary American politics.  It enlarged and aroused the Republican base, providing the Republican Party with its big 2010 House victory, and now it’s calling the tune, forcing the Republican House leadership to propose draconian cuts which would be harmful to state and local economies.

Yet look at who the Tea Party is.  According to a New York Times poll, only 18% of Americans identify themselves as Tea Party supporters and they are wealthier and better educated than the general public.

They are angry, the poll found, about what they see as the undue support that the Federal government provides those less fortunate, especially African Americans.  Thus it’s not surprising that most of the cuts that Republicans propose are in social programs that help the poor and working class, as opposed to Social Security and Medicare, from which their base directly benefit.

Republicans say they have a mandate.  But recent polls consistently show that the majority of Americans, while wanting the deficit cut, don’t what programs cut, whether it’s the big ones like Medicare and Social Security or domestic programs like education, anti-poverty programs, and farm aid.  But since the Republicans have put entitlements and defense off the table, and tax increases have been ruled out, the only places to cut the deficit are those very domestic programs … and the proposed cuts are massive.

The silent majority must make themselves heard … they must call or email their Congressmen to let them know that they do not want these programs cut because it will further depress the economy and increase unemployment.  If they do not, the consequences for the nation will be dire.

We were all thrilled watching the Egyptians protest.  Surely Americans can pick up a phone or send an email to express their protest to these out-of-touch moves by the Republicans.