"compromise" is worth almost 10 times more to your average Wisconsin millionaire than to a laid-off

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/111815644.html

By Gregory Junemann

Dec. 13, 2010 |(7) Comments

I spend my workweek in Washington, D.C., as an elected leader of a labor union representing technical, scientific and professional employees in the public and private sector. On weekends, I come home to Milwaukee to be with my family. Every time I make the trip, I get whiplash.

Here in the heartland, hundreds of thousands of families are struggling to make ends meet. But the political debate in Washington has become increasingly heartless, piling insult after insult upon the already injured middle-class workers who are the real engine of America's economic growth.

The so-called budget compromise reached by President Barack Obama and Republican legislators, for example, will deliver a desperately needed extension of unemployment benefits to 2 million jobless workers. That includes 40,000 women and men in Wisconsin. A worker earning a mid-range benefit of $200 a week, who remains unemployed for the maximum extension period of 13 months, would receive about $11,000.

That's real money that will help real families. But it's small beer compared to what the Obama-GOP deal will deliver to Wisconsin's millionaires: a two-year tax cut worth $108,000, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

In other words, this "compromise" is worth almost 10 times more to your average Wisconsin millionaire than to a laid-off worker struggling to pay the family grocery bill.

Sound fair? If not, watch your wallet, because you're paying for it. This windfall for the wealthy will add $120 billion to the national debt. That's real money, too, and we - or our grandchildren - will have to pay the bill someday.

Shortly before accepting a tax deal strongly tilted in favor of high-income households, President Barack Obama made life more difficult for the middle class by adopting another really bad Republican idea: a two-year wage freeze for federal workers.

FULL opinion at link.

[OHdem10]

1. Of course, As Maggie Thatcher used to say, now we must look

after "our people". It is the same here in the good
old USA, both parties must look after "our people"
Anytime you say "our people" the implication is the
wealthy.

This is the way things are set up. We have very few
who willing to fight for the little guy. It has been
this way since we became a Conservative Democratic
Party (DLC or New Democrat).

If you happened to be watching the Senate about 30 minutes
ago you would have seen a lineup of Senators getting up
and speechifying about cutting spending, reforming tax
code, the deficit led by Durbin. Sounded like Moderate
Republicans. This is where the Leadership is.