This phony debt crisis has now passed through the looking glass into the realm where madness reigns. What should have been an uneventful moment in which lawmakers make good on the nation's contractual obligations has instead been seized upon by Republican hypocrites as a moment to settle ideological scores that have nothing to do with the debt.
Hypocrites, because their radical free market ideology, and the resulting total deregulation of the financial markets, is what caused the debt to spiral out of control this last decade. That and the wars George W. Bush launched but didn't have the integrity to responsibly finance. The consequence was a banking bubble and crash leading to a 50 percent run-up of the debt that has nothing to do with the "entitlements" that those same Republicans have always wanted to destroy.
Even Barack Obama has put cuts in those programs into play, warning ominously that a failure to lift the debt ceiling could cause the government to stop sending out Social Security checks. Why, when the Social Security trust fund is fully funded for the next quarter-century and is owed money by the U.S. Treasury rather than the other way around? Why would we pay foreign creditors before American seniors? The answer, offered as conventional wisdom by leaders of both parties, is that we cannot endanger our credit by failing to back our bonds, even though the Republicans have aroused the alarm of the main U.S. credit rating agencies by their brinkmanship on the debt.
What a topsy-turvy world when the same credit rating agencies that gave the thumbs up to the bankers' toxic mortgage-backed securities and credit default swaps now threaten the AAA rating of U.S. Treasury bonds. According to them, it will not be enough to merely lift the debt ceiling -- what had been assumed by both Republican and Democratic presidents to be a routine act. In addition to that, as the credit agency Standard & Poor's has insisted, more than $4 trillion has to be cut from programs that mostly benefit the victims of the banking meltdown. Otherwise the agencies will downgrade the U.S. credit rating, leading to higher interest rates that will destroy what remains of the U.S. housing market, dim the prospect for any improvement in employment and further enrich the Chinese government and other holders of U.S. debt.
President Obama and the Senate Democratic leadership are clearly poised to cave in to those demands in the spirit of "compromise," Obama's favorite word, but the Republicans keep upping the ante. The GOP is shameless: Speaker John Boehner has sanctimoniously responded to Obama's plea for a bargain that gives up almost everything to the right wing by rebuffing the president on the grounds that the Republican Party is the last line of defense against big government.
Boehner dared blame Obama for "the largest spending binge in American history," which he attributed to the health care reform, most of which has yet to be enacted, and a stimulus program that was an underfunded effort to save American jobs. Not a word from Boehner or the other Republicans about the banking collapse that resulted from their deregulatory policies, the real cause of the inflated debt.
Boehner's slogan, "I've always believed, the bigger government, the smaller the people," is downright bizarre coming from someone who supported the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the banking bailout and the highest war spending since World War II, all of which is what caused government to get this big. Was it job stimulus spending that kept GM jobs in this country that made people smaller, or the loss of their homes and jobs as a result of the policies that are at the core of the Republican program?
What is at stake is a radical Republican agenda to totally reverse the progress in economic justice that began with the great reforms of Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal. Consider the direct consequence of the economic crisis that unfettered Wall Street greed has wrought, particularly in reversing the gains made by the most underprivileged sectors of the population. As The Wall Street Journal reported, based on a Pew Research Center study from 2005 to 2009,
"The wealth gap between whites and each of the nation's two largest minorities -- Hispanics and blacks -- has widened to unprecedented levels amid the housing crisis and the recession. ... The disparities are the greatest since the government began tracking such data a quarter-century ago. ..."
But there is plenty of suffering to go around as a result of the deep recession. The wealth of whites in that period declined by 16 percent, not to mention the ever-greater chasm between the top 2 percent and everyone else. That's the same 2 percent whose tax cuts the Republicans are determined to preserve.
Todd Brewster: Can the Constitution Prevent Debt Ceiling Catastrophe?
Rep. Keith Ellison: This Is Our Moment
But because of the greed of people wanting my money more that I do, we have this crummy plan that forces our older citizens to work at McDonnalds and Wal-mart well into their 70's just so they can eat every night.
12.6% of your salary from the day you start working to the day you retire is put into a phony account for you so you can receive on average a monthly check of just $1280. If you were able to redirect your money to US Savings bonds or a bank CD you would have close to or over a million dollars saved for your retirement. And when you pass away, this money could go to a charity or your heirs so they could better their life as they saw best. Instead it goes to the government where their greed just spends it for politicians to get reelected.
One time, freedom ment being free to live life as you saw best. Now freedom means being free from personal responsibility,
With your 401k, the money you have saved can go to a charity, or to your heirs.
Hypocrisy, yes. The absolute failure to take any responsibility for the $6 trillion in debt added to the overall debt by 8 years of Bush is unbelievable, especially when Republicans controlled the House for 6 years and had complete control for 4. But, hypocrisy merely disguises perhaps the real aim: destroy the safety net.
There's a response to this. It's not Obama's constantly shifting line in the sand. It's for a grass roots revolution. What form this takes I'll leave to the imagination. But if the rich think this is going to be just business as usual, they need to review the 30s when unions occupied factories. The revolution may not be televised, but it can be tweeted.
Bush spent $1.37 trillion of Social Security surplus during his eight years as president. In his last year he spent $192.2 billion to fund huge tax cuts for the rich and two wars. During a speech on April 5, 2005, in Parkersburg, West Virginia, he openly admitted to the fact that all of the Social Security surplus revenue had been spent. He said, "There is no trust fund, just IOUs that I saw firsthand that future generations will pay—will pay for either in higher taxes, or reduced benefits, or cuts to other critical government programs." All of the actions the Republicans took in the last ten years have caused the financial debacle we are facing today. How dare they try to blame it all on Obama?
So, if you are rich, or you are part of a corporation, support the Republicans and they will always take very good care of you. If you really want to lose Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, everything you ever worked for, by all means -- support the Republicans. Their grand mission: Bring down the the economy, blame Obama for everything, totally gut your entitlements. It is all up to you.
Sadly, the Democrats have lost their ideological bearings. This is class warfare--from the top down. The bad guys are winning. Buying into the debt! deficit! hysteria is capitulation. Our immediate need is jobs, and the road to jobs now is no different from the New Deal. Once the economy gets rolling the private sector will participate. For now they're sitting on two trillion of capital. Cutting social security allows the plutocracy to plunder the payroll tax (as they've done since Reagan) to further reduce the level of income tax at the top and justify all the tax preferences that lower their rate of taxation below that of entry level workers.
Paul Craig Roberts: Looting Social Security
"By Paul Craig Roberts
Hank Paulson, the Gold Sachs bankster/U.S. Treasury Secretary, who deregulated the financial system, caused a world crisis that wrecked the prospects of foreign banks and governments, caused millions of Americans to lose retirement savings, homes, and jobs, and left taxpayers burdened with multi-trillions of dollars of new U.S. debt, is still not in jail. He is writing in the New York Times urging that the mess he caused be fixed by taking away from working Americans the Social Security and Medicare for which they have paid in earmarked taxes all their working lives.
[snip]
Wall Street has got away with its raid on the public treasury. Now, pockets full, it wants to pay for the heist by curtailing Social Security and Medicare. Having deprived the working population of homes, jobs, and health care, Wall Street is now after the elderly’s old age security.
Social Security, formerly an untouchable "third rail of politics," is now "unsustainable," while the real unsustainables—a pre-1929 unregulated financial system and open-ended multi-trillion dollar Global War Against Terror—are the new untouchables.
This transformation signals the complete capture of American democracy by an oligarchy of special interests."
The business community would love to see the end of work place, safety, and envirornmental regulations. The republicans (and blue dogs) are looking to defund to the point of killing any oversight.
http://vimeo.com/6109896
Behind the Swoosh on Vimeo
http://www.teamsweat.org/
TeamSweat
"...By marshalling the energy of a decade and a half of organizing on the Nike sweatshop issue, Team Sweat is striving to ensure that all workers who produce Nike products are paid a living wage..."
The world needs more Jim Keadys.
Republicans, especially the TEA PARTY "Republican impostors" in CONGRESS are ALL about killing Government Social Security and Medicare Plans,
and I will add, Public Worker Unions...even as THEY themselves have the unmitigated gall to be a tax payer paid Government employees, receiving GENEROUS tax payer paid salaries, tax payer subsidized Health Insurance and Retirement Plans!, and BTW...who do not need to UNIONIZE because THEY simply vote THEMSELVES wage raises and nice Health care/Retirement Plans without asking/negotiating with "We The People" their employers, about IF they deserve them or HOW MUCH "WE" want to pay them with OUR tax dollars!
Wouldn't it be nice if we ALL could do that? There would be no need for UNIONS!
Hypocrites like Michelle Bachmann for example, who is a tax payer paid GOVERNMENT employee with a generous tax payer paid salary and benefits who VOTES in Congress FOR the tax payer Government subsidies that go to HER FAMILY'S personal farm business, and she and her husband's CLINIC, AND that Clinic survives on tax payer MEDICARE dollars, while she PRETENDS she is a principled CONSERVATIVE Presidential Candidate who is against, Government "spending" tax payer's dollars, and MEDICARE!
She slams Federal mortgage loans, but she and her husband have in fact, purchased an expensive luxurious home by obtaining a, wait for it....
FEDERAL MORTGAGE LOAN!
You are supporting this FRAUD!