DC Centrists Unite Against the Middle ClassMike LuxAuthor, The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Posted: November 12, 2010 12:35 PM
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So let me be clear, because goodness knows I don't want to be seen as ungrateful: Thank you, honorable co-chairs, for the defense cuts you put in -- they are a good start. Thank you as well for not slashing the heart out of food stamps and Head Start and certain other poverty programs. I also am delighted that you guys listed the public option on health care as something to consider. I really am sincerely happy about all that.
But in spite of those good things, I think you will find the progressive movement will fight you every step of the way on this proposal, because we do actually believe in fighting for the middle class. My friends at Third Way think progressives will happily go along: "The recommendations on Social Security fall well within the mainstream of what most progressive organizations that care about Social Security solvency think should be done to save it," said Jim Kessler, vice president for policy at Third Way, a centrist Democratic think tank. "Everyone believes there should be increases in the retirement age, some adjustment to the cost-of-living-adjustments and some increase in revenues." Jim and his colleagues don't get it: This stuff about shared sacrifice that the D.C. centrists keep talking about is a nice theory. But the document Bowles and Simpson produced doesn't have shared sacrifice: It takes dead aim at the things that matter the most to the working and middle class. It asks them to work longer before they retire at the demanding and sometimes physically hard jobs many people in the working class have, if they can find work at all. It asks them to pay dramatically more in health care through the elimination of the deduction for insurance. It asks of them that they make the dream of home ownership far less affordable by eliminating the mortgage deduction. It asks them to pay higher fees, on whatever brief vacations they might be able to afford, to our national heritage of the park system.
It is this same middle class who have had no net increase in their household incomes over the last decade. It is them who keep having to pay higher regressive sales and property taxes at the state and local level while having less teachers, cops, and firefighters because of budget cuts. It is them who have seen higher gas and utility and grocery prices over the last few years, and who have seen their kids' college tuition and their health care costs soar through the roof. Since very few upper-income kids go into the armed services, it is the sons and daughters of the working middle class who have gone to fight our wars over the last seven years. It is their homes that have lost their value and in far too many cases are underwater in terms of their mortgages. And it is far too many of them who have lost their job or are now being forced to work in lower wage, part time, or temp jobs.
These are the people that out-of-touch Washington elites who are embracing these deficit recommendations, who mostly don't have these problems, want to make sacrifices. They aren't asking sacrifice of higher income folks -- in fact, the income tax rates are being flattened so the tax system is less progressive. They aren't asking it of corporate execs, whose corporate tax rates will go down. They aren't asking it of the Wall Street bankers, who once again escape a financial-transactions tax. But boy are they sharing that sacrifice all the way around that American middle class.
This kind of D.C. centrism is a political nightmare of the first magnitude. It hurts the people who have borne the brunt of the excesses of the upper class in the last decade, and it hurts the people who are angriest at both parties -- who swung against Republicans in 2006 and 2008 and swung against Democrats in 2010. When the full commission votes on this, they should send it down in flames. And if they do vote yes on it, Obama and congressional Democrats should vigorously stand against it.<snip>
Link:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-lux/dc-centrists-unite-agains_b_782774.html:kick:
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