The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility held its inaugural hearing on Tuesday, launching the process through which the Obama administration plans to introduce drastic attacks on social spending and living standards to make the working class pay for the crisis of American capitalism.
The commission, consisting of 10 Democrats and 8 Republicans, is charged with discussing ways of slashing trillions of dollars from future federal budget deficits and making recommendations to the White House and Congress six months from now. The December 1 report-back deadline, four weeks after the next congressional election, was chosen to ensure that the American people have no say in the process. (In Washington-speak, this is called “insulating the commission from politics.”)
In his statement formally opening the commission, President Obama declared, “Everything has to be on the table.” This is a lie, since the commission will be barred from considering cuts in military spending, rescinding the bank bailouts, or forgoing massive interest payments on the federal debt—one of the principal means of enrichment of the financial elite.
“Everything on the table” is another Washington code phrase, meaning that cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the major entitlement programs, will be among the measures to be considered and proposed. Obama is also abandoning his election campaign pledge not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year, giving the commission a green light to propose a Value Added Tax, an across-the-board federal tax on consumption that would in large measure replace the income tax and end the last remnants of progressive taxation...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/apr2010/pers-a29.shtml
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