We dodged another shut-down bullet, but only until November 18. That's when the next temporary bill to keep the government going runs out. House Republicans want more budget cuts as their price for another stopgap spending bill.
Among other items, Republicans are demanding major cuts in a nutrition program for low-income women and children. The appropriation bill the House passed June 16 would deny benefits to more than 700,000 eligible low-income women and young children next year.
What kind of country are we living in?
More than one in three families with young children is now living in poverty (37 percent, to be exact) according to a recent analysis of Census data by Northeastern University's Center for Labor Market Studies. That's the highest percent on record. The Agriculture Department says nearly one in four young children (23.6) lives in a family that had difficulty affording sufficient food at some point last year.
We're in the worst economy since the Great Depression -- with lower-income families and kids are bearing the worst of it -- and what are Republicans doing? Cutting programs Americans desperately need to get through it.
Medicaid is also under assault. Congressional Republicans want to reduce the federal contribution to Medicaid by $771 billion over next decade and shift more costs to states and low-income Americans.
It gets worse. Most federal programs to help children and lower-income families are in the so-called "non-defense discretionary" category of the federal budget. The congressional super-committee charged with coming up with $1.5 trillion of cuts eight weeks from now will almost certainly take a big whack at this category because it's the easiest to cut. Unlike entitlements, these programs depend on yearly appropriations.
Even if the super-committee doesn't agree (or even if they do, and Congress doesn't approve of their proposal) an automatic trigger will make huge cuts in domestic discretionary spending.
It gets even worse. Drastic cuts are already underway at the state and local levels. Since the fiscal year began in July, states no longer receive about $150 billion in federal stimulus money -- money that was used to fill gaps in state budgets over the last two years.
The result is a downward cascade of budget cuts -- from the federal government to state governments and then to local governments -- that are hurting most Americans but kids and lower-income families in particular.
So far this year, 23 states have reduced education spending. According to a survey of city finance officers released Tuesday by the National League of Cities, half of all American cities face cuts in state aid for education.
As housing values plummet, local property tax receipts are down. That means even less money for schools and local family services. So kids are getting larger class sizes, reduced school hours, shorter school weeks, cuts in pre-Kindergarten programs (Texas has eliminated pre-Kindergarten for 100,000 children), even charges for textbooks and extra-curricular activities.
Meanwhile the size of America's school-age population keeps growing notwithstanding. Between now and 2015, an additional 2 million kids are expected to show up in our schools.
Local family services are being cut or terminated. Tens of thousands of social workers have been laid off. Cities and counties are reducing or eliminating their contributions to Head Start, which provides early childhood education to the children of low-income parents.
All this would be bad enough if the economy were functioning normally. For these cuts to happen now is morally indefensible.
Yet Republicans won't consider increasing taxes on the rich to pay for what's needed -- even though the wealthiest members of our society are richer than ever, taking home a bigger slice of total income and wealth than in seventy-five years, and paying the lowest tax rates in three decades.
The president's modest proposals to raise taxes on the rich -- limiting their tax deductions, ending the Bush tax cut for incomes over $250,000, and making sure the rich pay at the same rate as average Americans - don't come close to paying for what American families need.
Marginal tax rates should be raised at the top, and more tax brackets should be added for incomes over $500,000, over $1,500,000, over $5 million. The capital gains tax should be as high as that on ordinary income.
Wealth over $7.2 million should be subject to a 2 percent surtax. After all, the top one half of 1 percent now owns over 28 percent of the nation's total wealth. Such a tax on them would yield $70 billion a year. According to an analysis by Yale's Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, that would generate at least half of $1.5 trillion deficit-reduction target over ten years set for the super committee.
Another way to raise money would be through a tiny tax (one-half of one percent) tax on financial transactions. This would generate $200 billion a year, and hardly disturb Wall Street's casino at all. (The European Commission is about to unveil such a tax there.)
All this can be done, but only if Americans understand what's really at stake here.
When Republicans recently charged the president with promoting "class warfare," he answered it was "just math." But it's more than math. It's a matter of morality.
Republicans have posed the deepest moral question of any society: whether we're all in it together. Their answer is we're not.
President Obama should proclaim, loudly and clearly, we are.
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Follow Robert Reich on Twitter: www.twitter.com/RBReich
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Rabbi Samuel April: Class Warfare?: No Class, No War, No Fair
I'm afraid it has become one that has lost its heart and much of its moral compass.
The rich are afraid to lose their money and the middle class and the poor share the same fear. Because we have misunderstood what money really is, we are scaring our economy to death! Let's face that foolish fear! We are all ourselves the wealth! We need to drop the fear and begin to understand and cooperate and share the wealth we are in innumerable ways. To have a healthy economy and a harmonious society we have to understand the limitless value we all share together. This is something to really be THANKFUL for! We have one another. With this thankful discovery our financial crisis can quickly vanish.
This man of wisdom, this founding father, had great vision. America's strength comes from it's union, it is a union of states, a union of people, struggling together to improve our lives.
The merchants cannot be depended upon, they are untrustworthy, and even betray their own countrymen inn their ceaseless quest for greater profits. The above quote shows why.
Corporate suits are not to be trusted!!!
Most of us lost any "hope" of any "change" when Obama continued the policies of bush (the lessor) with the same personnel and timetables in Iraq, escalated our involvement with a bush (the lessor) "surge" in Afghanistan, and started up with Libya. Domestically, we watched in horror while he appointed a tax dodging Wall Street crony to be Treasury Secretary. Gave up on health care for all, caved in to tax breaks for the wealthy and capitulated on the debt ceiling.
Then again, what's a sane person to do? Vote for more republican "Borrow and Spend" ideology for continued wars, military expansion, Empire building and tax breaks for the wealthy "job creators" (who never created a job). Look forward to the death of Social Security, Medicare and "welfare" - which includes Veterans health care?
No, going back to options that failed is not the answer.
Where are the jobs?
Explain what the GOP has done or will do to create jobs or improve the nation's economic crisis.
If your answer is cut spending, deregulate and offer more tax cuts for the "job creators....give concrete examples why these policiesa will work now but have not in the last 30 years.
It took government intervention to tie-in roof workers? Really. If the job is to dangerous, why would anyone wish to sacrifice their future, or their lives?
Doing Business in the USA !
Real Issue is JOBS.............not Taxes !
CONFIDENCE is the BIG Issue which is unaddressed by the DEMS, without major Tax Incentives
nobody will invest Private Capital in the USA !
Trust has disappeared from the Hearts of American Small Business !
Little of the cost of doing business has to do with taxes anyway (and tax incentives abound even as egregious loopholes are closed). "...by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home." (NYT) The moral issue, undermined by globalism, is preserving a decent standard of living for Americans.
Finally, it may be time to re-evaluate the "myth" of small business. Most small employers are restaurateurs, skilled professionals or craftsmen (doctors, plumbers), professional and general service providers (clergy, travel agents, beauticians), and independent retailers. These aren’t sectors of the economy affected by the growth efficiencies; these companies will remain small. Is it worth preserving a general tax cut for those earning over $200,000 merely because it affects some small businesses when fewer than one-third of self-identified small businesspeople belong to the top two income tax brackets?
The Corporate rate is 35 % which is higher than anywhere in the world and WHY Corporations do take their business overseas...Obama is hostile to business !!
The word "united" in the United States is a lie. Now I know that it is meant to mean the states and not the people within them but the comparison is apt. The class warfare in the US is abhorrent and the silence from the gop on caring for ones own is deafening. More awful is the libertarian mindset of engaged sociopathy.
With such anti-social tendencies spiking among conservatives I believe the democrats should be scared, very scared, about the slant the gop is leaning. Banal disregard for ones fellow man has historically led to atrocities. I cannot fathom why such neglect is acceptable and unchallenged.