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No compromise, no changes, no deficit commission, no change, no Obama. NO.
What Obama's Catfood Commission has initially proposed is worse than we are feared. Nothing less than the complete destruction of the middle class is what is being proposed. Virtually every single program that has helped the people of this country have a modicum of security and ease is being tapped for reduction or elimination.
Yes, I recognize that this is the first draft, first in a long, agonizing series of compromises and changes. But the significant thing about this first proposal is that it set the bar for all compromise to be measured against. And it sets that bar pretty high.
Thus, while raising the age of Social Security seems, and is, outrageous, it become positively benign in the face of raising the age and cutting benefits. Likewise, cutting out the mortgage interest deduction seems, and is, outrageous, but under the influence of that magical thing called compromise, it seems much better than cutting out the deductions for mortgage interest and student loans.
This is how the game works. An initial, completely outrageous position is set initially. But it allows lawmakers to "compromise" away, and the finished product, which would have seemed draconian before now seems like a model of sanity compared to what was initially proposed. This is how our safety, our security, our lives are going to be compromised away.
Whatever the final shape of deficit reduction takes, one thing you can be assured of, it will spell the end of the middle class. The rich and well off will suffer very little, if at all, but the rest of us will watch everything that we've worked so hard for go slipping out of our grasp.
The military is going to hardly be effected. 100 billion dollars in cuts:woohoo: we're going back to the 2005 military budget. Close a few unneeded bases, scrap a few of the more outrageous weapons programs, that's it. Oh, except for the fact that the soldiers, the men and women who serve our country, are going to be screwed like the rest of us.
But this is what this commission release was all about. It set the bar of outrage so high that anything even slightly below that seems like welcome sanity. This is how these deals get done.
We can't afford to compromise on this one, we simply can't. Our security, our standing as a people and a country depend on it. Many in government, though interestingly not the president, and throughout our country have roundly rejected these proposals for the insanity that they are. What we have to do is make clear, by any means necessary, that these proposed cuts are simply unacceptable. No compromise, no deals, no caving, no cuts. Is a rise in SS eligibility ages any less outrageous if it isn't paired with a decrease in benefit? NO! Is a cut in the mortgage interest deduction any less costly to the middle class if it isn't paired with child tax credit? NO! This is why we can't compromise, because even the compromise positions that will be taken, based on this initial proposal, are outrageously draconian in and of themselves.
Do we need to cut our debt? Certainly, but there are ways of doing this without destroying the middle class. First, raise the tax rates on the rich and take away the corporate and other tax loopholes that allow corporations and the rich to receive tax returns instead of actually having to pay their taxes. Second, seriously cut the military budget. Current military spending is far above the official Pentagon budget of 700 billion, in fact if you add it all together, our current military spending is about twice that Pentagon figure, in reality standing at somewhere between 1.4 and 1.5 trillion dollars. We can end these wars, cut the military and still be left with an effective defense force. Third, let the Bush tax cuts expire, all of them. They are going to cost us 4 trillion over the next ten years, money that can be used elsewhere, like a true WPA style jobs creation program and reducing the debt.
But the simple fact of the matter is that we cannot afford to compromise on this one. We can't afford to opt for the lesser of two evils because the stark fact of the matter is that the lesser of two evils will still dramatically impact millions of people, and not for the better.
This is going to mean that we have to get radical ourselves. Write, call, get out in the streets. Make common cause with your freeper neighbor because they're not going to like losing their mortgage deduction, child tax credit or have SS reduced any more than you do. We have to present a unified, bipartisan front on this one. And we have to use the one real weapon that we have left, and that's our vote. People have to pledge now, and stick to that pledge, that they will not vote for any politician that votes for, or in any way supports these draconian cuts, or any "compromised" version of them. From dogcatcher to president, we have to make clear to our "leaders" that their jobs are on the line.
Otherwise we are doomed to slip back into a feudal regime, one ruled by the rich and corporate.
No, this simply can't stand, this simply can't happen.
NO!
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