Democracy Now!: Slash SS/Medicare

[Shireling]

Obama Deficit Commission Criticized for Proposals to Slash Social Security, Medicare

snip:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Your reaction to the preliminary proposals, because obviously the commission has not yet even voted on these proposals. This is sort of the outline of what they’re considering. Your reaction?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, the only thing worse than the economics is the politics. The economics are totally perverse. Bowles talks about being on a path to an economic crisis. Of course, we’re in an economic crisis. We’re in a prolonged recession that bears more resemblance really to a depression. And you cannot get out of a depression by austerity. The idea that you should have an arbitrary set of cuts in the deficit at a time when you need more public spending is totally perverse. It’s the economics of Herbert Hoover. It’s the politics of the Republican right. And it’s one more indication of the capture of the Obama administration by Wall Street.

snip:

And if the President had the kind of spine that we hoped he had when we elected him, he would be saying, "No way are we going to balance the budget on the backs of working people." Instead, I think the risk is that the President is going to embrace some version of this. And the hope is that the four progressives on the commission,three of whom have already said "no way," plus Max Baucus, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee who’s on the commission, will view this as a threat to his prerogatives as a Senate committee chairman. The best thing about this commission is that maybe it will deadlock.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you say the four progressives, who are the other progressives that you are expecting to stand up on these issues?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, Jan Schakowsky, who’s a member of the Democratic House leadership, she’s a very progressive member of Congress from Chicago; Xavier Becerra, also a progressive; and Dick Durbin, the senator from Illinois. They have said "no way." Andy Stern, the former head of the Service Employees International Union, is on the commission. Andy is a bit of a free spirit. Andy loves to see if there can be some kind of a deal. But I think this particular deal will even stick in Stern’s craw. So, I think the hope is that the Republicans, some of them, will say, "Well, nothing that reduces defense spending or reduces tax loopholes are we going to support," and the liberals on the commission will hang tough and say, "No way are we going to cut Social Security and Medicare."

I think the problem is that the editorialists of this country—if you read this morning’s New York Times editorial—are saying, "Well, gee, anything that the left and the right don’t like must be pretty good." And that’s exactly wrong. I mean, this is a case where the so-called center just completely has it wrong. You cannot get out of a depression by having deeper cuts in spending. And I think if you look at the criticism of the Federal Reserve policy of buying treasuries because it doesn’t know what else to do, in the hope that that will lower interest rates and somehow stimulate recovery, the Fed is doing that as a last resort because Congress is opposed to increasing social investment. The only way you can really get out of a prolonged slump like this is to increase social investment in job creation, in the infrastructure, in the clean energy that the country needs. And yet that path seems to be blocked. And instead of fighting for some degree of public investment, Obama, who, after all, appointed this commission, is at risk of embracing at least some of its proposals.

snip:

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Robert Kuttner, one of the arguments of those who would support many of these cuts are saying that this will allow the government to further cut the nominal tax rates for—not only for high income, but for middle-class Americans, as well. But isn’t the reality—I mean, there was a time in this country when the highest tax brackets, in the 1950s, were being taxed at a 90 percent rate. Now they’re down into the mid-thirties, and they think that that is too high a rate, and they want it lowered further. What about this tax policy that now, for years, has continued to reduce the tax rates for the highest-earning Americans in the country?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Sure. Well, the Alice in Wonderland character of this whole exercise is demonstrated by the fact that, on the one hand, they’re talking about some kind of a tax deal where you cut loopholes and you raise rates—or lower rates. And by the way, one of the so-called loopholes that they want to close is the child tax credit. Hundreds of millions of dollars of relief for working poor people, where you get a refundable tax credit to help you raise your kids, that’s one of the supposed loopholes that the commission wants to get rid of. That’s crazy.

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http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/11/obama_deficit_commission_criticized_for_proposals

[cyr330]

1. I'd say DO IT NOW. . .

Especially for those states that elected fucking tea party assholes. Let them take the first cuts to ss and medicare, since they seem to be so goddamned concerned with the deficit, and they DO NOT want to cut the military budget. . .