|
The deficit reduction plan released last week by the co-chairmen of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility shows that this so-called budget deficit commission shows the commission has run severely off course.
The recommendations issued by co-chairs Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles would cost 4 million jobs over three years and reduce economic growth by 0.7 percent in 2012, 1.4 percent in 2013 and 1.9 percent in 2014, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI).
The Simpson-Bowles approach calls for job-killing budget austerity to begin in October 2011, even though most economic forecasters expect unemployment to remain as high as it is today or even increase by then.
Simpson and Bowles also call for deep cuts in Social Security benefits, even though Social Security is not responsible for our long-term budget problem and the public is overwhelmingly opposed to benefit cuts.
Simpson and Bowles also propose more cost-sharing in Medicare. They suggest lowering top income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans and for corporations and eliminating the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), while sparing Wall Street from any taxes on bonuses or financial speculation.
Bowles collects $335,000 a year as a director of Wall Street investment bank Morgan Stanley, and Simpson has called Social Security “a milk cow with 310 million tits.”
AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Simpson and Bowles “just told working Americans to “Drop Dead.”
Especially in these tough economic times, it is unconscionable to be proposing cuts to the critical economic lifelines for working people, Social Security and Medicare. Some people are saying this plan is just a “starting point.” Let me be clear, it is not.
In the EPI report, economists Josh Bivens and Andrew Fieldhouse note that because the Simpson and Bowles recommendations would reduce economic growth, they would end up lowering the deficit far less than Simpson and Bowles claim.
Bivens and Fieldhouse say the co-chairs’ proposal “threatens to increase the already unacceptably high level of unemployment and increases the possibility of the economy falling back into outright recession.”
They argue a better path to fiscal responsibility would be to invest in job creation and growth to increase revenue in the near-term, raising revenue from new sources over the medium-term to stem the hemorrhaging caused by the Bush-era tax cuts for the very well-off, and reforming the health care provision to generate long-run budgetary savings. Otherwise, Bivens and Fieldhouse say:
In the present economic environment, the near-term austerity measures proposed by the co-chairs would be fiscally counterproductive and crippling to states, communities, and families, delaying a robust economic recovery for years.
NOW WHAT?
America’s workers have already tried appeasement, “pragmatic compromise” and then retreat and look where that go-along-to-get-along course of action got us when it came to health care reform. (For an in-depth analysis of how we were bamboozled and sold-out during the choreographed “debate” on health care reform pick up a copy of HIGHJACKED! by Dr. John Geyman. Dr. Geyman was a featured speaker at the 2008 PCPA Convention in Portland.)
Make no mistake about it. If the Commission’s recommendations are enacted they will severely impact U.S. households with incomes of $100,000 or less. That’s 85% of the nation! (2% of America’s households have incomes of $250,000 per year or higher. This group equates to about 2.3 million households and 6 million people that really are rich in terms of both wealth (assets) and income. These people can afford to pay more taxes because they have benefited disproportionately from past tax cuts, and are insulated from the devastating effects of the recession.)
55% of households in the U.S. struggle by on incomes of $50,000 or less. That’s over 47% of us!
Yet the Cat Food Commission is calling for even more fiscal “austerity” when it comes to job-creating programs and other forms of social justice for the working class, while at the same time proposing further rewards to the rich thus laying the groundwork to widen the economic divide between the wealthy and the rest of us!
So once again, what to do? The old adage “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” is certainly relevant to the discussion.
Appeasement, “pragmatic compromise” and retreat have been tried over and over again, yet with the same results. It is time to try something new – which in reality is something quite old – working class solidarity! It will involve getting and staying involved. It will require going to labor councils with calls for action! It will require attending Democratic Party meetings and getting Party organizations to contact lawmakers with this message: The Deficit Commission has got to go, or else! (Or else what, one might ask? Assured ballot box revenge, that’s what!) It’s an uphill battle. Entrenched hierarchy in labor and politics will fight back. The words of Fredrick Douglas will most certainly be borne out:
"Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Our union cannot be the firestorm, but it can certainly be the spark! On more than one occasion our union has taken action in the furtherance of social and economic justice. And on more than one occasion labor councils and other organizations have passed resolutions commending us for our militancy. Resolutions are words on paper. They may make us feel good because we’ve been lauded by others, but rather than “feel good” resolutions wouldn’t our deeds have been more effective had they been part of a greater action by many? As a dear old (now deceased) Brother used to say on such occasions, “Don’t tell me you love me, show me you love me!”
Make no mistake about it. Something will happen regarding the Deficit Commission. It will either grow legs in Congress or it will be rejected. We have our work cut out for us. We cannot do it alone! We must involve a multitude of others in the struggle. We can and must reach out to others with this message: No to the Deficit Commission! No to appeasement! No to “pragmatic compromise”! No to retreat!
No to apathy!
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
