Nearly 50 million Americans, (49.7 Million), are
living below the poverty line, with 80% of the entire U.S. population
living near poverty or below it.
All
too true. It always amazes me to see people on my TV singing the
praises of the growing new economy, and I think to myself: Don't you
know any normal people? Via Political Blindspot:
If you live in the United States, there is a good chance
that you are now living in poverty or near poverty. Nearly 50 million
Americans, (49.7 Million), are living below the poverty line, with 80%
of the entire U.S. population living near poverty or below it.
That near poverty statistic is perhaps more startling than the 50
million Americans below the poverty line, because it translates to a
full 80% of the population struggling with joblessness, near-poverty or
reliance on government assistance to help make ends meet.
In September, the Associated Press pointed to survey data that told
of an increasingly widening gap between rich and poor, as well as the
loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs that used to provide
opportunities for the “Working Class” to explain an increasing trend
towards poverty in the U.S.
But the numbers of those below the poverty line does not merely
reflect the number of jobless Americans. Instead, according to a revised
census measure released Wednesday, the number – 3 million higher than
what the official government numbers imagine – are also due to
out-of-pocket medical costs and work-related expenses.
The new measure is generally “considered more reliable by social
scientists because it factors in living expenses as well as the effects
of government aid, such as food stamps and tax credits,” according to
Hope Yen reporting for the Associated Press.
Some other findings revealed that food stamps helped 5 million people
barely reach above the poverty line. That means that the actual poverty
rate is even higher, as without such aid, poverty rate would rise from
16 percent to 17.6 percent.
Latino and Asian Americans saw an increase in poverty, rising to 27.8
percent and 16.7 percent respectively, from 25.8 percent and 11.8
percent under official government numbers. African-Americans, however,
saw a very small decrease, from 27.3 percent to 25.8 percent which the
study documents is due to government assistance programs.
Non-Hispanic
whites too rose from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent in poverty.
“The primary reason that poverty remains so high,” Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan economist said, “is that the
benefits of a growing economy are no longer being shared by all workers
as they were in the quarter-century following the end of World War II.”
In sociology and economics, the precariat is a social class formed by people suffering from precarity, which is a condition of existence without predictability or security, affecting material or psychological welfare as well as being a member of a Proletariat
class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and
hence sell their labour to live. Specifically, it is applied to the
condition of lack of job security, in other words intermittent employment or underemployment and the resultant precarious existence.
Next year is the 800th anniversary of
one of the greatest political documents of all time. The Magna Carta
was the first class-based charter, enforced on the monarchy by the
rising class. Today’s political establishment seems to have forgotten
both it and the emancipatory, ecological Charter of the Forest of 1217. The rising mass class of today, which I call the precariat, will not let them forget for much longer.
Today we need a precariat charter, a consolidated declaration that
will respect the Magna Carta’s 63 articles by encapsulating the needs
and aspirations of the precariat, which consists of millions of people
living insecurely, without occupational identity, doing a vast amount of
work that is not counted, relying on volatile wages without benefits,
being supplicants, dependent on charity, and denizens not citizens, in
losing all forms of rights.
The precariat is today’s mass class, which is both dangerous, in
rejecting old political party agendas, and transformative, in wanting to
become strong enough to be able to abolish itself, to abolish the
conditions of insecurity and inequality that define it. A precariat
charter is a way of rescuing the future.
Every charter has been a class-based set of demands that
constitute a progressive agenda or vision of a good society. The whole
is greater than the sum of the parts. A radical charter restructures,
being both emancipatory, in demanding a fresh enhancement of rights as
freedoms, and egalitarian, in showing how to reduce the vital
inequalities of the time. Since the crash of 2008 and during the
neoliberal retrenchment known as austerity, many commentators have
muttered that the left is dead, watching social democrats in their
timidity lose elections and respond by becoming ever more timid and
neoliberal.
They deserve their defeats.
As long as they orient their
posturing to the “squeezed middle”, appealing to their perception of a
middle class while placating the elite, they will depend on the mistakes
of the right for occasional victories, giving them office but not
power.
This retreat of the laborist left does not mean progressive politics is dying. Costas Lapavitsas and Alex Politaki, who wrote for
this site earlier this month asking why Europe’s young are not rioting
now, are too pessimistic. Appearances deceive. The reason for the lack
of conventional political activity reflects a lack of vision from the
left.
This is changing, and quickly by historical standards. Let us not
forget that the objectives and policies that emerged in the great
forward march a century ago were not defined in advance but took shape
during and because of social struggles.
I have been fortunate to witness the phenomenal energies within the
precariat while traveling in 30 countries over the past two years. But a
transformative movement takes time to crystallize. It was ever thus.
To make sense of what is happening, one must appreciate that we are
in the middle of a global transformation. The disembedded phase
dominated by the neoliberal Washington consensus led to the crisis of
2008 – fiscal, existential, ecological and distributional crises rolled
into one. By then, the precariat had taken shape. Its growth has
accelerated since.
What Jeremiahs overlook is that a new forward march towards a revival
of a future with more emancipation and equality rests on three
principles that help define a new progressive agenda.
The first principle is that every forward march is inspired by the
emerging mass class, with progress defined in terms of its insecurities
and aspirations. Today that class is the precariat, with its distinctive
relations of production, relations of distribution and relations to the
state. Its consciousness is a mix of deprivation, insecurity,
frustration and anxiety. But most in it do not yearn for a retreat to
the past. It says to the old left: “My dreams are not in your ballot
box.”
The second principle is that a forward march requires new forms of
collective action. Quietly, these are taking shape all over the world.
No progressive moves can succeed without forms of collective voice, and
the new forms will include a synthesis of unions and the guilds that for
two millennia promoted occupational citizenship.
The third principle is that every forward march involves three
overlapping struggles, which take time to spring into effective life.
The first struggle is for recognition. Here, contrary to the Jeremiahs
on the left, there has been fantastic progress since 2008.
Recognition has been forged in networks boosted by a string of
collective sparks, through the Arab spring, the Occupy movement, the
indignados, the upheavals in the squares of great cities, the London
riots of 2011, the spontaneous actions in Istanbul and across dozens of
Brazilian cities in 2013, the sudden rise of Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy’s elections last year, the riots around Stockholm, the brave, prolonged occupation of the streets in Sofia, Bulgaria, until usurped by an oligarch’s thugs, and the even braver outrage of the precariat in Kiev in
recent months. These events are messy, loosely linked at best. But the
energy out there is vivid, if one wants to see and feel it.
What has been achieved is a collective sense of recognition, by
millions of people – and not just young people. A growing part of the
precariat perceives a common predicament, realising that this is a
collective experience due to structural features of the economic and
political system. We see others in the mirror in the morning, not just
our failing selves. The precariat is becoming a class for itself,
whether one uses that word or another to describe a common humanity.
There is a far greater sense of recognition than in 2008.
That was necessary before the next struggle could evolve into a
unifying call for solidarity. That is a struggle for representation,
inside every element of the state. It is just beginning, as the
precariat realises that anti-politics is the wrong answer. Again, there
are encouraging signs that the energy is being channelled into action.
We demand to be subjects, not objects to be nudged and sanctioned,
fleeced and ignored in turn.
The precariat must be involved in regulating flexible labour, social
security institutions, unions and so on. The disabled, unemployed,
homeless, migrants, ethnic minorities – all are denizens stirring with
anger and collective identity. We are many, they are few. The years of
slumber are over.
The third struggle is for redistribution. Here, too, there is
progress. The social democratic, lukewarm left has no clothes, and
neither does the atavistic left harrying at its heels with empty
threats, wanting to turn the clock back to some illusionary golden age.
They would not understand the subversive piece of precariat graffiti:
“The worst thing would be to return to the old normal.”
Unstable labor will persist; flexibility will increase; wages will
stagnate. Now what? The struggle for redistribution is in its infancy,
but it has evolved into an understanding of class fragmentation, of how
the plutocracy seduces the salariat and placates the proletariat. The
struggle will show that with globalization a new distribution system
must be constructed, far more radical than that offered by a living
wage, however desirable that might be.
A precariat charter should revive a rights-based path towards
redistribution of the key assets denied to the precariat, including
security, control over time, a reinvigorated commons, assets essential
for its reproduction and eventual abolition. This vision is taking
shape, messily but perceptibly.
In 1215, the class of barons forced a powerful monarchy to concede to
demands for recognition, representation and redistribution. Throughout
history, emerging classes have done much the same, from the French
Revolution with its radical Enlightenment and the wonderful achievements
of Thomas Paine and others to the Chartists of the 19th century and the
spate of human rights charters after the second world war. The
progressives of the era have always reinvented the future. They are
doing it now. Cheer up.
Abby Huntsman is leading her generation astray with bad facts and a clueless perspective about Social Security.
Abby
Huntsman, shame on you! You have a platform to use responsibly, not to
spout talking points that have been debunked over and over again.
Yes, the granddaughter of a billionaire, daughter of millionaire and
2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman went on a rant last week about
how millennials aren't going to get Social Security. That's an old saw.
We baby boomers heard it, too and quite nearly were sold the same bill
of BS goods back in the early 80's.
Huntsman wants to tell it like it is, but she fails due
to lack of information. And if her generation believes what she said,
it's going to be in deep trouble.
A lot of her spiel resembles the rants issuing from the mouth of
former GOP Sen. Alan Simpson, 82, a veteran font of Social Social
Security misinformation--which shows, one supposes, that error and
ignorance is no respecter of age. Most of it has been debunked so
thoroughly and repeatedly that one is tempted to believe that the
misrepresentations are deliberate.
But as a favor to Huntsman and her generation, we'll set her straight. Again.
Gawd, I love Michael Hiltzik. Read the whole thing.
Even more importantly, it was disappointing to see you
repeat the phony claim that there is a "generational war" between the
young and the old. The real "war" in this country is between the haves
and the have-nots, and it's no secret who's winning that one. In fact,
this notion of a "generational war" was dreamed up in the think tanks
and PR firms of billionaires, so that credulous journalists,
politicians, and yes, news anchors, would pick it up and repeat it
endlessly.
Mission accomplished: many of them have.
Let's be real here. We know that Social Security cuts aren't likely
to affect baby boomers nearly as much as they will the generations that
follow -- particularly millennials. So why push the idea that
old people are greedy, when all that does is provide ammunition for an
argument that will be used to shaft your fellow young people?
Again,
we know who's getting all the national wealth, and it's not old people.
Let's look at the facts: in 2012, the average Social Security benefit
was $13,648, or $1137 a month.
And that's the average -- for workers
with low earning, or those (primarily women) who take time out of the
workforce to perform caregiving work, benefits are often much lower.
For two-thirds of beneficiaries, Social Security makes up half their
income or more.
We've heard all of Abby's points for decades. Actually, they've been
around since Social Security passed and are nothing more than the
product of resistance by the 'haves' who don't think they live in a
society where the elderly should have a solid safety net under them. She
does a disservice to all of us by repeating them, especially under the
guise of a doomsday message for her fellow millennials.
Social Security is - bar none - the most successful and solvent
social program in this country. It will be there for millennials and
generations following if they choose not to listen to Abby Huntsman's
tired arguments against it.
Now is the time to expand Social Security,
not cut it. We should make that expansion for Abby's generation and
those who currently benefit, because it's the right and moral thing to
do.
President Obama is doing what critics have urged him to do for years:
he’s saying what he wants. His new budget will say no to austerity and
no to Social Security cuts. Richard Wolffe and Joy Reid discuss.
When it comes to major policy battles, since 2009 the
GOP is 0-3. Before it fails again, David Frum offers up seven ways the
party is shooting itself in the foot. ByDavid Frum
Republicans have lost three major fights since 2009. They seem likely soon to lose a fourth—and all in the same way.
The three previous losses (in case you’re feeling forgetful) were, in order:
(1) The fight over Obamacare.
Result: the most ambitious new social insurance program since Medicare,
financed—unlike Medicare—by redistributive new taxes on investment and
high incomes.
(2) The 2012 election. Result:
Despite the worst economy since the Great Depression, the reelection of
President Obama, Democratic retention of the Senate, and 1.4 million
more votes cast for House Democrats than for House Republicans.
(3) The fight over the “fiscal cliff” at the end of 2012. Result: In order to preserve some
of the Bush tax cuts, Republicans for the first time since 1991 left
their finger prints on a tax increase for upper income groups.
Now
comes fight (4), the fight over the government shutdown and the debt
ceiling. This one isn’t lost yet. But unless Republicans are prepared to
push the country into the catastrophe of national bankruptcy sometime
around October 17, it’s hard to see how this one does not end in a
Republican retreat, clutching whatever forlorn fig leaf they can
negotiate from President Obama.
Behind
all four defeats can be seen the same seven mistakes: what you might
call the seven habits of highly ineffective political parties. Let’s
call the roll:
Habit 1:Maximalist goals.
There’s
a lot about Obamacare for a Republican not to like. But to demand
Obamacare’s outright repeal (which is what “defunding” amounts to)
barely 10 months after decisively losing an election in which Obamacare
occupied a central place—well, that’s shooting for the moon. we’ve seen
equivalent moon shots again and again since 2009. During the original
Obamacare legislation, Republicans took the position: no, no, not one
inch. During the election of 2012, Republicans were not content merely
to replace one president with another. They also campaigned on the most
radical platform the party since 1964. They wanted the biggest possible
mandate. Instead they got whomped.
Habit 2:Apocalyptic visions.
Republicans
have insisted on maximal goals because they fear they face a truly
apocalyptic moment: an irrevocable fork in the road, with one path
leading to socialist tyranny, the other to the restoration of the
constitutional republic. There sometimes are such moments in history of
nations. This is not one. If the United States has remained a
constitutional republic despite a government guarantee of health care
for people over 65, it will remain a constitutional republic with a
government guarantee of health care for people under 65. Obamacare will
cost money the country doesn’t have, and that poses a serious fiscal
problem. But it’s not as serious a fiscal problem as is posed by the
existing programs, Medicare and Medicaid, which cover the people it
costs most to cover. It’s not a problem so serious as to justify panic.
Yet
panic has gripped the Republican rank-and-file since 2009—and instead
of allaying panic, Republican leaders have aggravated and exploited it,
to the point where the leaders are compelled to behave in ways they know
to be irrational. In his speech to the “Bull Moose” convention of 1912,
Teddy Roosevelt declared, “We stand at Armageddon and we battle for the
Lord!” It’s a great line, but it’s not a mindset that leads to
successful legislative outcomes.
Habit 3:Irrational animus.
Barack
Obama was never likely to be popular with the Republican base. It's not
just that he's black. He’s the first president in 76 years with a
foreign parent—and unlike Hulda Hoover, Barack Obama Sr. never even
naturalized. While Obama is not the first president to hold two degrees
from elite universities—Bill Clinton and George W. Bush did as well—his
Ivy predecessors at least disguised their education with a down-home
style of speech. Join this cultural inheritance to liberal politics, and
of course you have a formula for conflict. But effective parties make
conflict work for them. Hate leads to rage, and rage makes you stupid.
Republicans have convinced themselves both that President Obama is a
revolutionary radical hell-bent upon destroying America as we know it
and that he's so feckless and weak-willed that he'll always yield to
pressure. It's that contradictory, angry assessment that has brought the
GOP to a place where it must either abjectly surrender or force a
national default. Calmer analysis would have achieved better results.
Recently, GOP lawmakers have been pointing fingers at Democrats for a supposed unwillingness to compromise.
Habit 4:Collapse of leadership.
The
Republicans have always been the more disciplined of America’s two
political parities, and today they still are. But whereas before,
discipline used to flow from elected leadership down, today it flows
from factional leadership up. An aide to Sen. Mike Lee told the National Review:
“The minority of the minority is going to run things until our
leadership gets some backbone.”
The Lee aide was specifically referring
to the Republican minority in the Senate, but the language has broader
implication. According to Robert Costa,
a well-sourced reporter at NRO: “What we’re seeing is the collapse of
institutional Republican power ... The outside groups don’t always move
votes directly but they create an atmosphere of fear among the members
[of Congress].” Large organizations are inherently vulnerable to capture
by tightly organized militant tendencies. This is how a great political
party was impelled to base a presidential campaign on the Ryan plan—a
plan that has now replaced the 1983 manifesto of the British Labour
Party as “the longest suicide note in history.” It’s the job of
leadership to remember, in the words of Edmund Burke, “Because
half-a-dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their
importunate chink, whilst thousands of great cattle, reposed beneath the
shadow of the British oak, chew the cud and are silent, pray do not
imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the
field.” That job is tragically going undone in today’s GOP.
Habit 5:Self-reinforcing media.
The
actor Hugh Grant once bitterly characterized his PR team as “the people
I pay to lie to me.” Politicians do not always need to tell the truth,
but they always need to hear it. Yet hearing the truth has become harder
and harder for Republicans. It takes a very unusual spin artist to
remember that what he or she is saying isn’t actually true.
Non-politicians say what they believe. Politicians sooner or later
arrive at the point where they believe what they say. They have become
prisoners of their own artificial reality, with no easy access to the
larger truths outside.
This entombment in their own artificial reality
was revealed to the entire TV-watching world in Karl Rove’s Fox News
election night outburst against the Ohio 2012 ballot results. It was the
same entombment that blinded Republicans to the most likely outcome of
their no-compromise stance on Obamacare—and now again today to the most
likely outcome of the government shutdown/debt ceiling fight they
started.
Habit 6:Politics as war.
The
business of America is business, as Calvin Coolidge said. American
politics has been businesslike too. Americans understand that the
business of the nation is ultimately settled by a roomful of tired
people negotiating their differences in the small hours of the morning:
everybody gets something, nobody gets everything. It’s a grubby
business, unavoidably, and most of the time, Americans understand that.
They build statues to Martin Luther King. They elect Lyndon Johnson.
From
time to time in American politics, differences arise that are too wide
to negotiate. Slavery versus no slavery. Prohibition versus drink.
Pro-life versus pro-choice. Professional politicians usually keep their
distance from absolutist movements. As George Washington Plunkitt
observed, “The politicians have got to stand together this way or there
wouldn’t be any political parties in a short time.”
That line was meant
as a joke, but it contains truth. Professional politicians are
disagreement managers. Since 2009, however, the GOP has given
unprecedented scope to those who for their own ideological, financial,
or psychological reasons refuse to allow disagreements to be managed—and
instead relentlessly push toward the kind of ultimate crises
the country so nearly escaped in 2011 and teeters again on the verge of
today.
Habit 7:Despair.
The great British conservative historian
Hugh Trevor Roper scoffed at the Marxist claim that history runs in one
direction only. “When radicals scream that victory is indubitably
theirs, sensible conservatives knock them on the nose. It is only very
feeble conservatives who take such words as true and run round crying
for the last sacraments.” The great conservative poet T.S. Eliot
explained that there are no lost causes, because there are no won
causes. How many ways can one express that idea? So long as there is
life, there is hope; everything old is new again; etc. etc. etc.
The trouble with
these assurances, however, is that they contain an implicit moral that
politics is very hard work. Free-market economics—so discredited in the
1940's—returned to favor in the 1970's because of tireless research by
brilliant economists. The excesses of the 2000's have undone that
success, and now it will take serious thinking, and some necessary
reforms, to repair the damage. It’s a tempting shortcut to throw up
one’s hands and say, “I’ve seen the best of it.
The future holds only
darkness.” It’s especially tempting for a party that disproportionately
draws its support from older voters. The fact is that for those of us
over 50, the future offers us as individuals only decline leading to
extinction. It’s natural to believe that what happens to us
must happen to the world around us. Who wants to hear that things will
become much, much better for humanity shortly after we ourselves shuffle
off the scene? Yet of all mental errors, despair is the most dangerous
to a democracy. The “politics of cultural despair” lead to
authoritarianism and worse, as the German historian Fritz Stern warned
in his history of that same title.
The
man who has no hope will make the most irrevocable errors—and
unnecessarily plunging the United States into the first national
bankruptcy since the 1780's would be about as irrevocable as an error as
history contains.
I've generally been staying as far away as possible from CNN's new
stinker of a show, which is the revival of Crossfire, but this Tuesday,
the inclusion of Sen. Bernie Sanders as one of their panel members
actually gave me a reason to sit through most of it.
Towards the end of the show, they spent some time arguing about the
Senate filibuster rules and whether Republicans have been allowed to air
their grievances over the Affordable Care Act or not, along with Ted
Cruz and his stunt of a fake filibuster.
Sen. Sanders took the opportunity to do what he does best, and advocate
for working Americans out there, and the record income disparity and
the fact that the Congress has done very little to get Americans back to
work and rebuild our infrastructure.
So naturally, his fellow guest on the show, Sen. Lindsey Graham
thought it was a perfect opportunity to make an offer to Sanders to
"reform entitlements" in exchange for flattening the tax code. What a
deal. Thankfully Sanders was there to remind the audience of just what
Graham's "reforms" would mean for average Americans.
SANDERS: Let me just jump in and say I happen to think -- and by the way,
Newt, when you were speaker, you ran a pretty tough ship there, as well, I
recall.
But I happen to think that the rules in the Senate are pretty crazy. You or I
could go down there and basically stop the entire United States government. One
person could do that. Is that what democracy is about? I don't really think
so.
But here's the point. Lindsey correctly says there are some bills that he
thinks are not getting to the floor that might pass. Fair enough. But let me
tell you something else. I happen to believe that the reason that Congress is
now held in such contempt is the American people are hurting very badly. Middle
class, in my view, is collapsing. Poverty numbers are at an all-time high, and
the gap between the very, very rich and everybody else is growing wider.
JONES: And they blame Obama for that. Do you blame Obama for that?
SANDERS: No. I mean, it's a -- you know, it's a long-term trend.
JONES: Just checking. Just checking.
SANDERS: The bottom line is, what do the American people want, Lindsey? They
want us to create jobs.
GRAHAM: Yes.
SANDERS: They want us to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure and create
millions of jobs. They want us, in my view -- Newt, you quoted polls -- to raise
the minimum wage substantially above where it is now. They want us to end these
absurd loopholes that billionaires and corporations enjoy.
One out of four corporations doesn't pay a nickel in taxes. And Republicans
are saying, "Oh, we have to cut 4 million people from Food Stamps."
GRAHAM: Bernie, if I -- if I was willing to flatten the tax code and take
deductions away from the wealthy to pay down debt, would you reform entitlements
by extending the age, based on the fact we're all living like Strom
Thurmond?
SANDERS: Absolutely not. Not at a time where we have so much...
GRAHAM: That was a moment of bipartisanship that quickly passed.
SANDERS: Now let me ask you. Let me ask you.
GRAHAM: OK.
SANDERS: At a time when the top 1 percent own 38 percent of the wealth in
America and the bottom 60 percent own all of 2.3 percent, will you work with me
to ask the wealthy to start paying their fair share of taxes so we can deal
with...?
GRAHAM: Here's what I will do. I will create a tax code that creates jobs for
more Americans, because that's a good thing. But I would tell the wealthy people
of this country, when it comes to Medicare, you're not going to get any more
subsidies. When it comes to Social Security, you're going to have to take less,
because we can't afford to give everybody what we promised.
If you will help me reform the tax code, I -- help me reform entitlements,
I'll help you reform the tax code, because we're becoming Greece if we don't do
this.
SANDERS: All right. But when you talk about reform entitlements, I
understand.
GRAHAM: Yes.
SANDERS: Correct me if I'm wrong. You want to raise the entitlement age to
Social Security?
GRAHAM: Over 30 years.
SANDERS: Over 30 years to 70 years.
GRAHAM: No. What I want to do is harmonize Medicare with Social Security: go
from 65 to 67 over the next 30 years. And I want means testing for people in my
income level, Newt's income level, Van's income level. Have to pay the actual
costs.
SANDERS: But you also support the chain CPI.
GRAHAM: Yes, I do.
SANDERS: Which cut benefits -- let me talk. Which would cut $650 from Social
Security benefits between the ages of 65 and 70. And make massive cuts for
disabled vets.
GRAHAM: Well, no. What I'm trying to do is save the country from bankruptcy.
And when the president of the United States, who I usually don't agree with, put
CPI on the table, I thought it was a very courageous thing to do. And I am
willing to flatten that tax code. I can go to the rich people in America and all
the corporations, say, "We're going to take deductions off the table you now
enjoy. Take that money back for the many, not just the few."
But if you don't help me reform the entitlements, there's no way to get there
by taxing people.
SANDERS: I want everybody to understand, when Lindsey talks about reforming
entitlements, what he means is cutting Social Security and cutting Medicare. I
think that's a bad idea.
GINGRICH: OK. And I would say -- and we're about to run out of time. But I
would say what you're talking about is going bankrupt, and that's a debate we
want to invite you to come back.
GRAHAM: ... program. I've actually spent...
GINGRICH: We'll have you back on access for health care, which will be a
great topic, the two of you. And we ought to come back and talk a little bit
more about how do we solve this?
GRAHAM: Eighty million Baby Boomers are going to retire in the next 40 years.
How do we replace them? We need rational immigration.
JONES: The first thing, maybe stop giving those subsidies...
GRAHAM: How do you save Medicare and Social Security with 80 million people
coming into the system?
JONES: What about first of all, you supported $4 billion subsidies to oil
company that don't need them. We've got -- we have a lot of conversations we
need to have -- I'm going to give it back to you, Newt, to take us out of
here.
GINGRICH: Kind of -- You almost agreed with him for a second. I was sitting
back.
JONES: I changed my mind.
GINGRICH: Let me -- I want to thank Senator Sanders and Senator Graham.
Next, we "Ceasefire." Is there anything out of all this that the two of us
can agree on?
When Graham wants to address what's gone on with Wall Street and the banks and what they did with Greece and allowing them to mask their debt,
maybe we can have an "honest conversation" about that as well, but I've
seen no desire on the part of the likes of Graham or his fellow
Republicans to do anything other than further deregulate financial
markets and make those sort of problems worse and not better.
The fact that he continually brings up Greece to justify gutting our
social safety nets is dishonest and disgusting, but that hasn't stopped
him from doing it over, and over, and over, and over again.
Republicans have given up on the city of Detroit, they want to wipe the slate
clean and start privatizing city assets, and in the process, city workers are in
danger of losing their pensions.
Ed Schultz outlines his four step plan to save Detroit. Lansing,
Michigan Mayor Virg Bernero and Michael Eric Dyson join Ed to discuss.
Way to go, Congress! Three weeks ago, the GOP-led House of Representatives approved a bill providing millions in farm subsidies, while removing food stamps from the farm bill package entirely. Then,on July 11th, they actually went ahead and passed this travesty of a bill even though it disproportionately penalizes people in their own states!
Meanwhile, here in “blue” America, we’re covering our ears against a
heavy, clangorous din as millions of jaws drop to the floor. How do
these conservatives keep getting away with this crap? Maybe it has something to do with all the vile myths and outright lies
churned out by the right wing propaganda machine — oops, I mean,
‘media’ — on a daily basis. As is generally the case with legislation
and sausages, right-wing propaganda is a messy and unappetizing business, and most of us really don’t want to watch it being made.
That’s why this video from Media Matters for America
is such an eye-opener. After watching this montage of casually callous,
ignorant, and appalling statements from Rush Limbaugh and the talking
heads at Fox News, you’ll have a better idea of why folks from
high-poverty states — like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Missouri,
Tennessee, Texas, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Arizona, New
Mexico, Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia, Alabama, Maine, and Arkansas —
keep voting for these conservative meanies.
Here’s the video:
The quotes from this lovely video
cliptage all center around eight tired, inaccurate, and mean old myths
about food stamps and poverty in general:
(1) If you need food stamps,
you’re a loser and it’s your fault;
(2) Liberal politicians promote food
stamps so people will become dependent on welfare, and vote for them;
(3) People on food stamps aren’t really poor, and don’t really need
help;
(4) We can’t possibly have hunger in America, because so many
Americans are clinically obese;
(5) Speaking of which … maybe some of
these food stamps recipients should go on a diet;
(6) People on food
stamps are welfare cheats;
(7) Who needs food stamps when we can go
dumpster diving?; and
(8) Having a social safety net is bad, because it
creates a culture of dependency.
1. If you need food stamps, you’re a loser and it’s your fault.
“The image we have of poor people as starving and living
in squalor really is not accurate. Many of them have things, what they
lack is the richness of spirit.”
– Stuart Varney
Not only does this sort of thinking promote the idea that people are
poor for lack of a work ethic and good morals, it also catches those of
us who do need help in a vicious cycle of self-hatred, self-blame, and
secret shame that encourages us to hate food stamp recipients and vote
against welfare programs even while we’re being helped by them. We’re
not the ones who should feel ashamed. People who think it’s okay for
people to starve and go without basic necessities in a land of wealth
and plenty are the ones who should feel ashamed.
2. Liberal politicians promote food stamps so people will become dependent on welfare, and vote for them.
“Re-elect Obama, food stamps for everyone.”
– Laura Ingraham
Obviously, this is not true … otherwise the folks living in the Republican-dominated states listed above would stop voting for these jerks!
3. People on food stamps aren’t really poor, and don’t really need help.
“They’re all gonna have a phone, a TV set, a car, and 120 free minutes, and food stamps.”
– Rush Limbaugh
First of all, having a cell phone, television, a car, and food stamps does not
make you well-off. We are only able to afford cheap consumer
electronics because they’re produced in countries with low wages, unsafe
working conditions, and few regulations. Meanwhile, many of us don’t have
secure employment any more because globalization’s incessant race to
the bottom has unfairly forced us to compete against these workers.
Instead of promoting fairness, safety, and higher living standards
amongst our trading partners, we’re lowering our own standards. Thanks
to Walmart, we can afford to buy lots of cheap, plastic crap. But life’s
necessities — like food, housing, healthcare, and gas or transportation
remain impossibly expensive for many of us.
4. We don’t have hunger in America, because so many Americans are clinically obese.
“Sixteen MILLION children face a summer of hunger. Now,
Michelle Obama told us they’re all so fat and out of shape and
overweight that a summer off from government eating might be just the
ticket.”
– Rush Limbaugh
“Poor people in America have an obesity problem. And yet, we give more people food stamps.”
– Geraldo Rivera
I can barely even get past the spectacle of a disgustingly obese,
cigar-chomping, mean-spirited slob like Rush Limbaugh giving health
advice to the less economically fortunate amongst us … but here goes.
Believe it or not, it is possible — and increasingly common in America, according to Elaine Watson’s recent article in a trade publication for nutritionists — for us to be obese and malnourished at the same time. That’s because there’s a
vast gulf between getting enough — or too many — calories, and getting
enough nutrition and exercise. Calories and junk food are cheap. More
nutritious foods, like fresh produce, are often more expensive and
inaccessible to low-income people living in isolated rural or inner city
areas (and who often don’t have cars). Exercise opportunities are also
challenging in unsafe and isolated neighborhoods, especially if you have
chronic health problems from obesity and malnutrition.
5. Maybe some of these food stamps recipients need to go on a diet.
“I should try it, because, do you know how fabulous I’d look? I’d be SO SKINNY!”
– Andrea Tantaros’s giddy thoughts on taking the food stamps challenge and spending only $130 per month on food.
Squeeeeee! She can look caring AND lose weight! Sounds like a
win-win for Tantaros, who is already such a slender wisp of a thing —
both physically and mentally — she might flat-out disappear. Which could
also be a win-win for the rest of us. What’s not to like?
6. People on food stamps are welfare cheats.
“Remember that lottery guy? Still getting food stamps! Come on!”
– Gerry Willis
This old and tiresome trope started when Ronald Reagan conjured up images of welfare queens
driving pink Cadillacs. Funny, I always thought those were Mary Kay
saleswomen. But it makes absolutely no sense that this hypothetically
undeserving thief would risk felony charges just to scam $130 in food
stamps per month. If you’re going to game the system, why not just throw
on a suit, work for a bank, and cheat investors and mortgage holders?
It’s easier and better paid, plus Wall Street’s white collar criminals
almost never do jail time.
7. Who needs food stamps when you can go dumpster diving?
“There’s always the neighborhood dumpster. Now you might
find competition with homeless people there, but there are videos
produced to show you how to healthfully dive and survive until school
starts back up in August.”
– Rush Limbaugh
Yikes! If our local homeless population here in San Jose, CA saw Rush
Limbaugh’s plumber-butt sticking out of a dumpster, they’d run
screaming for the hills. I don’t even know where to begin, because the
image of desperate parents digging around in dumpsters to feed their
children scraps of moldy food until free school lunches resume is
downright Dickensian. Do we seriously want to live in the squalid world
of “Oliver Twist“? I’m seriously starting to think our Republicans actually do. I don’t know how Limbaugh caught wind of the Freegan movement
(the practice of … um … “reclaiming and eating discarded food”), but
this is hardly how we should expect citizens of a supposedly first-world
democracy to live.
8. Having a social safety net is bad, and creates a culture of … um … Depends™ency.
“Well, it’s like we’re wearing one, gigantic Depends
undergarment. It’s like, hey, we’re America, don’t worry about it. Now,
pretty soon we won’t have to go to the bathroom for ourselves.”
– Kimberly Guilfoyle
Is this some new and even more vile version of what“All In The Family‘s” Archie Bunker hilariously malapropped as “tinkle down theory?”
Like, if we come together as citizens and build a safety net that
catches us when we fall into hard times, we’re literally shitting on
each other? Like, ew. Thanks for the lovely image, Kimberly Guilfoyle.
Why do we think it’s so horrible for people to take care of each
other? Families and human societies have done exactly that since long
before civilization began. Having a social safety net to help in times
of misfortune — especially when so many people’s fates are determined by
huge, global, multi-national corporations and rich people who keep not creating
jobs — is a crucial hallmark of civilization. In fact, our ability to
form emotional bonds, work together cooperatively, communicate, and form
mutually supportive communities is a big part of what supposedly sets
humans above other life forms (though the opposable thumbs and more
complex/proportionally larger brains certainly help).
Since
conservatives claim to love Jesus Christ so
much, you’d think they’d want us to love and take care of one another
the way Jesus so famously taught. Instead, they envision a dark,
dystopian world dominated by a sociopathic elite that either uses or
crushes everyone in their path. I’d call it “social Darwinism,” if these
religious zealots actually believed in Darwin.
Author: Elisabeth ParkerElisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, "like" her on facebook, "friend" her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.
When the Supreme Court decided the big health-care case
last June, its ruling was seen as a huge win for President Obama. His
administration had fended off a challenge that would have dismantled the
entire reform effort; it lost on only a small issue to which few people
had paid much heed. But a year later, it's increasingly clear that the
minor loss is punching a major hole in the law's primary ambition -
expanding health insurance coverage to most of the 49 million Americans
who lack it.
Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance for the poor and
disabled, was a cornerstone of the law's strategy. An expansion of the
program that would open eligibility to every American earning an income
near or below the poverty line was designed to enroll some 17 million
people - about half of the law's coverage gains. But the Court ruled
that Washington couldn't force the states to expand their programs, and
politicians in most states, disdainful of Medicaid's rules and opposed
to all things "Obamacare," have simply said no.
That means some 25
states, and some 7 million people, will lose out on access to coverage,
leaving low-income residents with no opportunity to obtain affordable
insurance in the new regime. "It's bad," says Caroline Pearson of the
consultancy Avalere Health. As recently as February, she had predicted
as few as five state holdouts by year's end; her current forecast is
much more pessimistic.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is putting on a
brave face. "Given the climate around this law, given the number of
states that were actually in litigation, and the election, the number of
Republican governors who stepped up and said, 'We really want to do
this,' I find to be very encouraging," she tells National Journal. Nevertheless, it's a long way from the administration's original plan.
Twenty-six states brought the case asserting their right not to
expand Medicaid. Although they won that right, administration officials,
health industry leaders, and journalists concluded after the Supreme
Court decision that they'd eventually go along. The feds promise to pay
100 percent of expansion costs for three years, and then an amount that
would never go below 90 percent; this was seen as too good a deal to
turn down. Governors had grandstanded against the 2009 economic-stimulus
money too, but nearly all had signed on. What state leader would want
to turn down a huge infusion of federal cash?
Republican governors soon began querying HHS. Would the department
let them use federal funding to expand Medicaid only partway? HHS held
off answering them for months, and then, after the presidential
election, told them the decision was all or nothing. The administration
was sending a message: The law cannot be bargained over or repealed, so
the choice is in or out.
As predicted, Republican governors started flipping. First Gov. Brian
Sandoval of Nevada endorsed a full expansion. Then came the governors
of New Mexico, Arizona, Ohio, Michigan. Even Rick Scott, the Florida
governor elected on an anti-Obamacare platform, said expanding Medicaid
was the right thing to do. Chris Christie followed suit in New Jersey,
as did others. But endorsements haven't always led to expansions. The
Florida Legislature did not share the governor's conversion, and Scott
quickly backed down. At press time, both Ohio and Arizona's Legislatures
continue to debate expansion.
Other governors who were considered obvious gets - such as
Pennsylvania's Tom Corbett and Tennessee's Bill Haslam - declined
expansion. Some of the poorest states with the most to gain have left
piles of federal cash on the table. Medicaid was such a toxic issue in
Mississippi that the Legislature adjourned without even reauthorizing
the state's current program. While governors know they'll be
judged on the health of the state economy, many legislators care more
about ideological purity, and few Republican lawmakers are interested in
the political risk associated with voting for anything branded with the
president's name. Brian Haille, a former health aide to Haslam, says he
doesn't expect any Medicaid enthusiasm in Tennessee until after the
Republican primary filing deadline next year. "You've got lawmakers who
are ducking and covering and do not want to vote on anything related to
Obamacare before then," he said.
There may still be some stragglers. Kentucky Democratic Gov. Steve
Beshear announced in May his state would move forward (he doesn't need
legislative approval). Republican Gov. Terry Branstad in Iowa, an early
skeptic about Medicaid, just reached an agreement with his Legislature
to expand. But to do so, he needed to rebrand the program as something
else. The plan, which still needs federal approval, will move some poor
residents into private insurance markets and other into a state-run
program that covers different benefits and pays doctors differently from
the state's existing Medicaid program. "It isn't Medicaid expansion,"
insists Michael Bousselot, a policy adviser to Branstad, although he
notes that it will use the federal funds. Utah Gov. Gary Herbert tells NJ he won't be making a Medicaid decision until at least September.
But given the logistical and administrative hurdles associated with
expansion, even if politicians change their minds and convene special
legislative sessions, few additional states will be able to expand by
January. That means many low-income Americans will be left uninsured
next year, despite the promise of health care reform. While
middle-income people will have access to subsidized private insurance,
the poorest adults in those states that don't expand will get nothing.
The Supreme Court dealt Obamacare a major blow after all.
Tonight we are thrilled to announce a new segment on the show: Viewpoint’s
‘revoltingly fake Christian of the week.’
Congressman Stephen Fincher, a Republican from Tennessee, just took the Bible
so far out of context he had to apply for a visa.
Fincher is a fierce opponent of food aid for poor Americans. You know, like
Jesus. He recently fought to cut 4.1 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition
Assistance Program. If you only watch Fox, that means ‘food stamps.’ And thanks
to the fine work of Fincher and his colleagues, 2 million working American
families, children and seniors have already been cut off from food
assistance.
So during a recent House agricultural committee debate, he decided to show
how Christian it is to turn your back on unemployed suffering Americans by
quoting one of the favorite Bible passages of revoltingly fake right-wing
Christians—2 Thessalonians 3:10—”anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”
But here’s the thing—ya see,Thessalonians isn’t god or Jesus talking, it’s
believed to have been written by Saint Paul. And in Paul’s day, many apocalyptic
Christians believed Jesus was coming back really soon and the world was going to
end anyway—so why work?
These early rapture-heads were hurting the local economy
and threatening the functioning society of Thessalonica—and I do hope I
pronounced that right. And Paul makes a good point—the “Left Behind” books may
be junk theology, but Kirk Cameron still shows up at his job.
So in that context, the quote makes sense. In Congressman Fincher’s context,
it’s pretty much the opposite of everything Jesus Christ ever stood for.
Now, Congressman Fincher went on to say, quoting from the book of selfish
toolery, “the role of citizens, of Christians, of humanity is to take care of
each other, but not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give
to others in the country.” Really, congressman? Washington steals and gives to
others?
Because here’s the other thing—while Fincher was passing bills to take food
out of the mouths of the poor, he was supporting a proposal to expand crop
insurance by $9 billion, and I’m sure the fact that he is the second most
heavily subsidized farmer in Congress and one of the largest subsidy recipients
in the history of Tennessee, had nothing to do with this.
Between 1999 and 2012, Fincher, opponent of poor lazy people, put out his tin
cup and collected $3.5 million in government money. This guy isn’t just a
welfare queen, he’s a welfare kingdom with a moat, castle and a catapult that
shoots government money over the wall into his boiling cauldron of
hypocrisy.
The average Tennessee farmer gets a subsidy of $1,500. In 2012 alone, Fincher
was cut a government subsidy check for $75,000, which is nearly double the
median household income in all of Tennessee.
So he votes to cut food stamps and expand crop insurance subsidies by $9
billion. This guy is swimming in so much dirty pork, he could single handedly
unite the Muslims and the Jews.
The biggest right-wing fake Christian argument is, “yeah Jesus said help the
poor but he didn’t say the government should steal from me to do it!
Benghazi!”
But here’s the thing, Jesus lived under European imperial occupation. He
didn’t have democracy. We do. So if you want to follow the teachings of
Christ—who constantly talked about caring for the poor—then in a democracy,
Christians get a chance to vote for the candidate who will most follow the
teachings of Christ and care for the least among us, as he commanded in Matthew
25—that filthy hippie.
But Fincher and the GOP don’t do that. They cut services for the poor and
taxes for the rich. And it’s a free country. They’re allowed.
But if you don’t
want your tax dollars to help the poor, then stop saying you want a country
based on Christian values. Because you don’t.
And that’s why representative
Fincher is our ‘revoltingly fake Christian of the week!’
Cenk Uygur, political reporter Joe Williams, Yahoo! News senior editor Beth
Fouhy and The Nation contributing writer Lee Fang assess President Obama’s
budget plan, which includes cuts to Social Security through a chained CPI.
Critics of the plan say the reform really just sells out senior citizens.
“Isn’t
this horrible negotiation strategy?” Cenk asks, now that Republican figureheads
like Paul Ryan are saying the chained CPI doesn’t count as true entitlement
reform.
“It’s never enough. It’s never going to be enough,” Williams says. “But
you have a potential strategy here where President Obama is demonstrating — yet
again — another object lesson that the Republicans are intransigent, that
they’re not willing to do anything that he proposes.”
There are plenty of ways to reduce the deficit without hurting
veterans, the disabled, and the poor.
President Barack Obama’s upcoming budget plan will reportedly include cuts in Social Security benefits by lowering the cost of living adjustments known as “chained CPI.”
That would lower income for seniors, disabled veterans and reduce
help to the poor. It would be bad for the American people, and liberals
in this country should be outraged.
“In 2008, candidate Barack Obama told the American people that he would not cut Social Security,” said Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders
on Thursday. “Having him go back on his word will only add to the
rampant political cynicism that our country is experiencing today.”
The president claims these cuts are all in the name of reaching a
deal with Republicans on deficit reduction. But unfortunately, these
changes would reduce federal spending by only $130 billion over ten
years. With our current national debt sitting at roughly $16 trillion,
the ten-year estimate would reduce our current debt by about a whopping
1%.
Ten years from now, the number will be even lower, and as you can
tell by that ratio, the big three are not the cause of our deficit.
We’ve shown you this chart more than once because it’s hugely important.
Republicans are directly responsible for the main drivers of our
deficit. The Bush tax cuts, along with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
will account for nearly half our debt by 2019.
Social Security is completely solvent. It has not added one penny to the deficit, and it should be left alone.
Americans know this, and they don’t want their earned benefits cut. A
recent survey shows eight in ten Americans would rather pay more taxes,
than have Social Security cut.
Meanwhile, there are plenty of ways to cut the deficit without hurting the poorest among us. A new study
reveals America’s largest corporations stash roughly $1.5 trillion in
offshore tax havens each year by using these loopholes; they avoid
paying about $150 billion in annual taxes. If just these loopholes were
closed, it would cover the cost of living adjustments for Social
Security and more.
President Obama needs to keep up the fight on this. He needs to put
the same effort into protecting the big three as he is with gun control
and immigration.
If he chooses to go forward with these cuts as expected on Wednesday,
it will show a clear disconnect between the American people and the
president they chose to protect their social safety net. He would be the
first Democratic president in history to cave on the big three and chip
away at Social Security.
”Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” — Albert Einstein
What’s worse than Congress obsessively focusing on slashing government spending instead of creating jobs? Screwing over all the people who haven’t been able to land non-existent jobs even more
by cutting their skimpy unemployment benefits. Who cares that it’s the
GOP’s fault that so many folks are unemployed? A bleak January Jobs
report proves that their austerity has slowed down our economic recovery, plus their decades of deregulation allowed the banks to wreck our economy in the first place. Let’s keep implementing their sucky policies and see what happens.
Travis Waldron from Think Progress
warns that soon the skeletal hand of sequestration will extend its bony
fingers to snatch away the long-term jobless’ last lifeline. Thanks to
the sequester — which went into effect on March 1st — the federal
government’s Emergency Unemployment Compensation will be cut. This
program provides extended unemployment benefits for people who’ve been
unemployed for longer than six months, after they’ve used up their state
benefits. According to Paul Davidson from USA Today, unemployment checks currently average a stingy $300 per week — which MSN Money‘s Life Coach flat-out declares is “nearly impossible” for Americans to get by on for very long. Nonetheless, it’s better than nothing.
Unfortunately, nothing is what many Americans will soon get. Nancy Cook from the National Journal writes that roughly two million people stand to lose their benefits:
Moreover, they are people whom the political
establishment has largely forgotten. There are no new stimulus programs
on the horizon for the long-term unemployed, nor is there anything new
to help train them or connect them to jobs. Those still receiving
benefit checks will see them whacked by as much as $450 in total between
now and the end of the fiscal year in September, according to Labor
Department estimates—all due to spending cuts that both parties consider
ill-advised and indiscriminate.
Even more alarmingly, Waldron also reports that eight states have already brutally slashed their unemployment programs,
with an estimated loss of $582-$4,161 per unemployed person, depending
on their state. And … big surprise! Five out of eight of these states
are in the South (more on that shortly).
Weeks of unemployment benefits lost, due to state cuts. Chart from Think Progress.
According to Waldron, cutting unemployment benefits will further slow the economy:
America’s unemployment program, stingy as it is,
also has benefits for the economy: the Congressional Budget Office
estimated that failure to extend the federal program at the beginning of
the year would have cost the country 300,000 jobs.
This would force even more desperate people to take sub-living wage
jobs with crappy employers like Walmart — if they’re even still hiring —
and force American tax payers to cover food stamps, housing subsidies,
and other necessities that these jobs don’t pay enough for workers to
afford. Well, at least until the Republicans cut those programs as well.
Walmart IS the original corporate welfare queen, after all.
Furthermore, IF you agree that (a) Forcing people to work for less than a living wage is a form of slavery; (b) Republican policies are dominated by southerners; and (c) The South’s lack of economic development model has always heavily relied on slave labor (though the skin color of their slaves has changed over the years); THEN it grows increasingly obvious that cutting benefits for unemployed people is just the latest step along the GOP’s primrose path to economic slavery (as brilliantly argued in an article by my AI colleague, Sanghoee, and by Imara Jones in ColorLines).
After forty years of imposing disastrous policies, conservatives have
succeeded in wrecking the economy and destroying the middle class job
base. Now all they need to do is shred our already-frayed social safety
net, and the American people will be primed to do our corporate masters’
bidding.
SPECIAL NOTE TO OUR UNEMPLOYED READERS: If you’re unemployed and worry that you might lose your benefits, my AI colleague Tiffany Willis compiled an extensive list to help you find the resources you need.
She knows what’s talking about, because she worked in workforce
development for the State of Texas for over a decade. She also invites
you to post questions to her on Twitter (@tiffany_willis).
She’s only one person and doesn’t have a team of operators standing by,
but she loves helping people and will do her best.
Elisabeth Parker is a writer, Web designer, mom, political junkie, and dilettante. Come visit her at ElisabethParker.Com, “like” her on facebook, “friend” her on facebook, follow her on Twitter, or check out her Pinterest boards. For more Addicting Info articles by Elisabeth, click here.
The President has fallen into the Republican trap: a false narrative that the
biggest crises facing America are our national debt and our budget deficits.
Middle Class and Poor America must be climbing the walls. President
Barack Obama ran a middle class centric campaign and won handily, and
added to the Senate and the House. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan’s policies
were soundly rejected. President Obama’s 2nd Inaugural Speech gave the impression that he would be presenting his version of FDR’s 2nd Bill Of Rights.
Instead, the president has fallen into the Republican trap: a false
narrative that the biggest crises facing America are our national debt
and our budget deficits. In fact, neither of these are insurmountable,
nor do they need to be tackled now. The results of attempting austerity and debt reduction during recessions are clear. The United Kingdom and European Union countries that attempted this have depressed their economies further.
When one focuses on numbers and not emotions, clarity comes quickly. Paul Krugman’s New York Times article “Dwindling Deficit Disorder” needs to be read by our President. He should also pass it on to every Congressman and Senator.
Krugman states:
For three years and more, policy debate in Washington has
been dominated by warnings about the dangers of budget deficits. A few
lonely economists have tried from the beginning to point out that this
fixation is all wrong, that deficit spending is actually appropriate in a
depressed economy. But even though the deficit scolds have been wrong about everything so far —
where are the soaring interest rates we were promised? — protests that
we are having the wrong conversation have consistently fallen on deaf
ears.
The fact that Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman along with
economists like Joseph Stiglitz’ numbers and predictions over the years
have been spot on while those “sanctioned” by Wall Street (e.g., Peter
Morici) have been steadily wrong speaks poorly of the media’s reporting
and politician’s honesty or at best their knowledge.
Krugman continues explaining the realities of “public debt management”:
People still talk as if the deficit were exploding, as if
the United States budget were on an unsustainable path; in fact, the
deficit is falling more rapidly than it has for generations, it is
already down to sustainable levels, and it is too small given the state
of the economy.
Bear in mind that the budget doesn’t have to be balanced
to put us on a fiscally sustainable path; all we need is a deficit small
enough that debt grows more slowly than the economy. To take the
classic example, America never did pay off the debt from World War II —
in fact, our debt doubled in the 30 years that followed the war. But debt as a percentage of G.D.P. fell by three-quarters over the same period.
Yes, we’ll want to reduce deficits once the economy
recovers, and there are gratifying signs that a solid recovery is
finally under way. But unemployment, especially long-term unemployment,
is still unacceptably high. “The boom, not the slump, is the time for
austerity,” John Maynard Keynes declared many years ago. He was right — all you have to do is look at Europe to see the disastrous effects of austerity on weak economies. And this is still nothing like a boom.
Krugman acknowledges the structural problems that must be addressed
with an aging population in the long term (but first, we need to assure a
robust recovery).
There are, of course, longer-term fiscal issues: rising
health costs and an aging population will put the budget under growing
pressure over the course of the 2020s. But I have yet to see any
coherent explanation of why these longer-run concerns should determine
budget policy right now. And as I said, given the needs of the economy,
the deficit is currently too small.
Krugman acknowledges that many are using the fear of the debt and deficit as an excuse to dismantle the social safety net:
Now, I’m aware that the facts about our dwindling deficit
are unwelcome in many quarters. Fiscal fearmongering is a major
industry inside the Beltway, especially among those looking for excuses
to do what they really want, namely dismantle Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security. People whose careers are heavily invested in the
deficit-scold industry don’t want to let evidence undermine their scare
tactics; as the deficit dwindles, we’re sure to encounter a blizzard of
bogus numbers purporting to show that we’re still in some kind of fiscal
crisis.
He finishes with the reality that must be broadcast loudly and often throughout the country.
The deficit is indeed dwindling, and the case for making
the deficit a central policy concern, which was never very strong given
low borrowing costs and high unemployment, has now completely vanished.
Many get upset when the President is accused of not leading. Most
people who have made that accusation were rarely friends of the middle
class, the poor, or of this President. The President has now been
re-elected by a substantial margin. The policies he ran on are what most
Americans want. These are not policies that can be considered the
tyranny of the majority that need protection from Senate filibusters and
obstructionists Republicans in the House (e.g., the majority pilfering
the wealthy minority, the majority taking away rights of the minority).
After-all, the converse is true.
With that said one must admit that if the debate is on the debt and
deficits and not what ails the economy, the middle class, the poor, the
students, the veterans, etc., then it is fact that the President is not
using his bully pulpit to lead and to educate. It is true that the Right
Wing echo chamber has polluted the body politic with misinformation as
Krugman so aptly states. It is the President’s duty to now to begin the
real fight against the damage inflicted on America by the Right. He is
not leading on this issue. He has no more elections to be concerned
about. It is time for him to pull his Party kicking and screaming if
necessary to do the right thing.
No cuts to Social Security. Raise the cap to ensure that the wealthy pays in more.
Tax capital gains at the same rate as working people’s income.
Remove all corporate tax breaks for companies that offshore and outsource American jobs.
This is not a tax the rich scheme. There are policies that acknowledge
the structural income and wealth disparity built into our form of
capitalism that can only be mitigated through policies that act as a
damper to a structural defect. Is a teacher or professor worth orders of
magnitude less than the broker or banker she taught? I cover much of
this in my book “As I See It: Class Warfare The Only Resort To Right Wing Doom”.
In 2011 when the discussion focused solely on the debt and deficits,
it took the emergence of Occupy Wall Street to change the narrative.
Income inequality and wealth disparity entered the lexicon. After an
election where middle class, income, and wealth was likely uttered more
than in the last 30+ years, it is incumbent that the President, his
Party, the middle class, and the poor do not allow Republicans to change
the narrative for their ultimate goal of destroying America’s social
safety net. It may take a new Occupy style movement to peacefully march
on the streets with resolve to demand that their will is effected.
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