The 1% is using the super-secret Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction (a.k.a. the Super Committee), to reach directly into the pockets of the 99% and steal hundreds of billions of dollars from them. This committee has unprecedented power. It has been meeting behind closed doors for weeks. Finally, though, its plans are leaking out, and they are not pretty.
In order to spare defense contractors, the pharmaceutical industry, and other fat cats, while appeasing the credit agencies, whose AAA ratings to crony-clients helped crash the economy, the Supercommittee has proposed slashing benefits for current and future beneficiaries of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, notwithstanding that the current deficit has nothing to do with these programs.
Neither Social Security, which by law, cannot borrow a penny, nor Medicare, nor Medicaid is to be found among the causes. That hasn't stopped the Super Committee, though.
The following chart shows the causes of our current deficits:
Politicians of all stripes routinely assert that any changes they make to Social Security will not hurt current beneficiaries or those close to retirement. Despite countless promises by politicians, a majority of the Super Committee members plan to do just that. In our elected officials' quest for avoiding accountability, their cut is dressed up in mind-numbing verbiage -- they plan to substitute the chained-CPI-U for the current CPI-W; just a little technical adjustment, they say.
Don't be fooled and watch your wallet. This change translates to a large benefit cut which hits hardest that part of the 99% who are the oldest and poorest. But it goes after other segments of the 99%, as well. Our men and women in uniform -- our wounded warriors and the families of those who have made the ultimate sacrifice -- are doubly or even triply hit by this change.
Not satisfied with cutting the Social Security and other cash benefits of seniors, people with disabilities, widows, widowers, children, veterans, and others, the majority of Super Committee members reportedly are ready to impose devastating cuts of at least $475 billion to Medicare and Medicaid. Having touted universal coverage as one of the goals of the Affordable Care Act, a majority of Democrats on the Super Committee, as well as Republicans, are poised to make getting health care more difficult for the sickest, poorest, people with disabilities, and seniors. These cuts could literally be a matter of life and death for millions of Americans.
Democrats cower at the thought of requiring the top one percent -- those who have benefited to excess from runaway tax cuts and galloping inequality -- to be taxed a modest amount for the common good. Yet a majority of Democrats on the Super Committee have shown themselves willing, in the name of "shared sacrifice" and "a balanced package," to cut the economic lifelines of the families of our soldiers wounded or killed in action and to cut the modest protections of our working men and women who have spent four or more decades building our country. Haven't those latter sacrificed enough? Is it really "shared sacrifice" if the wealthy can no longer deduct their private jets? Sounds like Marie Antoinette's, "Let them eat cake." For the record, Republicans outright refuse to tax anyone of wealth, yet are also eager to cut the benefits of the other 99%.
The 1% is particularly brazen in making these destructive proposals now when the 99% are making their voices heard across this nation in a multitude of ways. On Wednesday October 26th in Washington, DC, Rep. John Conyers stood with nine other members of Congress and more than 100 seniors and supporters, to deliver more than 2.3 million petitions from the 99% along with a resolution put forward by 82 members of Congress representing the will of the 99%, with a single message: Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
Almost immediately after these 2.3 million petitions were delivered, the Democrats on the Super Committee completely ignored their message and pushed more cuts to the middle class and less tax increases for millionaires and billionaires than any previous "bipartisan" commission. According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the current Democratic proposal is to the "right of co-chairs of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and the Senate's 'Gang of Six,' and even further to the right of the plan by the bipartisan Rivlin-Domenici commission"
The secretive and unaccountable Super Committee is meeting behind closed doors and proposing devastating cuts that would be shouldered by the 99%. We just released new reports in all of the Super Committee states detailing the $621 billion that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid provide for real Americans in the Super Committee states.
Both the Democratic and Republican proposals represent a total hijacking of the Super Committee by the 1%. Members of the Super Committee and other elected officials may not feel the urgency of America's unemployed and underemployed, but if they keep ignoring the will of the people, they will join the ranks of those unemployed, come election day. The 1 percent may have most of the money, but the 99 percent have the votes. It is time for the 99% to tell them in no uncertain terms, Hands Off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!
Click here to go to a site where you can leave a hand-written note for the Super Committee.
Follow Nancy Altman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/NoSocSecCuts
Dean Baker: Supercommittee of the One Percent Won't Even Think of Taxing Wall Street
Funny. China doesn't think we're a global economy, they tax the bejesus out of our imports. Most of these trade deals we make is strictly so American corporation can move their labor overseas to exploit poor people. The American people may see cheap products but we anything we do make here to ship there is taxed...unless it's subsidized like corn.
When are you guys going to get that it's not undocumented workers that are stealing our jobs? They're being sent to slave labor overseas by multinationals who don't look at all of us as 'all one'. They care only about their bottom line...and they are the 1% both domestically AND globally.
Let us hear JUST ONE Obama true believer support it.
so the 99% will fire all these people for insubordination. thats what the private sector does and that is what we the people will do to them. the same thing the private sector does and we are ready willing and able to fire them come 2012
Due to the oligarchs’ rapacious looting and their purchase of a politically protected luxurious lifestyle, the people of the US are on the road to permanent serfdom under a police state. The democracy was not given to the people of the US on a platter. It is not theirs for all time, irrespective of their efforts. Either people of the US organize and they find political leadership to take this on or they are going to be in deep trouble.
The failure of governance to address the current critical issues have already produced catastrophic consequences. Now we are experiencing a major global paradigm shift and it is still unfolding.
Wall Street only has the lobbyists. Today more than 42,000 Wall Street lobbyists manipulate USA's 537 elected officials with huge campaign contributions that fund candidates who support their agenda. It no longer matters who's the President
Since the heads of Wall Street and their representatives are afraid because they don’t have the substance or the arguments, they will not come out and debate with the people who occupy the Wall Street.
The political and economical leadership of the US has chosed to cartel profits and transformed the US economy to serve the colluding and unlawful oligarchy. The political and economical leadership of the US is bailing out failed paradigms with trillions of dollars while committing social injustice to its people. The political and economical leadership of the US including the US Congress have now become Wall Street's "Trojan Horses".
Modern day bank robbers are at Wall Street but they wear grey suits and not masks. Rampant speculators, propagandists and financiers of Wall Street are given some unfair advantage over the average consumers and taxpayers and the cumulative effect of the people watching selfishness prevail over the public interest has been an undermining of the public’s trust in the present US government. There’s no question the Wall Street is rigged against the average consumers and taxpayers. The Wall Street has a lot more information. Wall Street jerry-rig the system so that Wall Street always win. If the Wall Street loses trillions, the US Treasury will bail the Wall Street out so it can go back and do it again.
50 trillion dollars in global wealth was erased between September 2007 and March 2009, including 7 trillion dollars in the US stock market, 6 trillion dollars in the US housing market, 8 trillion dollars in the US retirement and household wealth, 2 trillion dollars in the US individual retirement accounts, 2 trillion dollars in the US traditional defined benefit plans and 3 trillion dollars in the US nonpension assets. Greed, arrogance and incompetence created a massive meltdown, cost trillions, and still Wall Street comes out richer and more powerful.
It would be more effective to raise the tax rates on the 1%, reduce $ going to military/industrial complex, streamline medicare/medicaid in the style of the VA, raise the contribution levels on SS, and rework the tax code to bring jobs and profits back to the USA.
There is a crash coming. If you think this can be fixed by raising caps or taxes then you are not facing reality. We can delay the inevitable a bit, but eventually the system will fail. The sooner we start cutting, the less painful it will be.
Yes, it will be less painful as soon as we cut out the trillions we spend in unnecessary wars, subsidies to those who can't compete fairly and profit, rigged markets, bailouts to those who commit fraud/
The average monthly SSI benefit for a retired worker is $1,177.00
http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/13/~/average-monthly-social-security-benefit-for-a-retired-worker
The average life span of 77.9 years:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lifexpec.htm
12.9 years of retirement = 154.8 months x $1,177 = $182,199.60.
Eliminating..not raising...eliminating the cap could easily fix this.
Opening up Medicare for all and eliminating the useless insurance companies who give their CEOs tens of millions in compensation, spend millions on advertising and lobbying Congress, stealing premiums and denying care would go a long way in solving our health care system problems.
Instituting price controls on pharmaceuticals, like other countries do, could also save us billions. We currently subsidize cheap drugs for the rest of the planet..and not just poor countries but Canada and Europe too.
We unnecessarily spend billions more than other countries to support a small network of insurance executives.
There are smart solutions that, unfortunately for us, means slowing down the gravy train for the top 1% swimming in obscene amounts of money. Then there's just using our very easily solvable problems as an excuse to rob the 99%. Our leaders have chosen the latter.
Super committee wanted to be called "Super Congress" originally.
Wake up people. Our govt is bought & paid for.
OWS!
http://www.getmoneyout.com/