In case you missed an explanation of the ridiculous fiscal policy......

Op-Ed Columnist

Sequester of Fools

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: February 21, 2013

They’re baaack! Just about two years ago, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, the co-chairmen of the late unlamented debt commission, warned us to expect a terrible fiscal crisis within, um, two years unless we adopted their plan. The crisis hasn’t materialized, but they’re nonetheless back with a new version. And, in case you’re interested, after last year’s election — in which American voters made it clear that they want to preserve the social safety net while raising taxes on the rich — the famous fomenters of fiscal fear have moved to the right, calling for even less revenue and even more spending cuts.

 

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

 

But you aren’t interested, are you? Almost nobody is. Messrs. Bowles and Simpson had their moment — the annus horribilis of 2011, when Washington was in thrall to deficit scolds insisting that, in the face of record-high long-term unemployment and record-low borrowing costs, we forget about jobs and concentrate exclusively on a “grand bargain” that would supposedly (not actually) settle budget disputes for ever after.

      

That moment has now passed; even Mr. Bowles concedes that the search for a grand bargain is on “life support.” Let’s convene a death panel! But the legacy of that year of living foolishly lives on, in the form of the “sequester,” one of the worst policy ideas in our nation’s history.

 

Here’s how it happened: Republicans engaged in unprecedented hostage-taking, threatening to push America into default by refusing to raise the debt ceiling unless President Obama agreed to a grand bargain on their terms. Mr. Obama, alas, didn’t stand firm; instead, he tried to buy time. And, somehow, both sides decided that the way to buy time was to create a fiscal doomsday machine that would inflict gratuitous damage on the nation through spending cuts unless a grand bargain was reached. Sure enough, there is no bargain, and the doomsday machine will go off at the end of next week.

 

There’s a silly debate under way about who bears responsibility for the sequester, which almost everyone now agrees was a really bad idea. The truth is that Republicans and Democrats alike signed on to this idea. But that’s water under the bridge. The question we should be asking is who has a better plan for dealing with the aftermath of that shared mistake.

The right policy would be to forget about the whole thing. America doesn’t face a deficit crisis, nor will it face such a crisis anytime soon. Meanwhile, we have a weak economy that is recovering far too slowly from the recession that began in 2007. And, as Janet Yellen, the vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, recently emphasized, one main reason for the sluggish recovery is that government spending has been far weaker in this business cycle than in the past. We should be spending more, not less, until we’re close to full employment; the sequester is exactly what the doctor didn’t order.

Unfortunately, neither party is proposing that we just call the whole thing off. But the proposal from Senate Democrats at least moves in the right direction, replacing the most destructive spending cuts — those that fall on the most vulnerable members of our society — with tax increases on the wealthy, and delaying austerity in a way that would protect the economy.
      

House Republicans, on the other hand, want to take everything that’s bad about the sequester and make it worse: canceling cuts in the defense budget, which actually does contain a lot of waste and fraud, and replacing them with severe cuts in aid to America’s neediest. This would hit the nation with a double whammy, reducing growth while increasing injustice.

 

As always, many pundits want to portray the deadlock over the sequester as a situation in which both sides are at fault, and in which both should give ground. But there’s really no symmetry here. A middle-of-the-road solution would presumably involve a mix of spending cuts and tax increases; well, that’s what Democrats are proposing, while Republicans are adamant that it should be cuts only. And given that the proposed Republican cuts would be even worse than those set to happen under the sequester, it’s hard to see why Democrats should negotiate at all, as opposed to just letting the sequester happen.

 

So here we go. The good news is that compared with our last two self-inflicted crises, the sequester is relatively small potatoes. A failure to raise the debt ceiling would have threatened chaos in world financial markets; failure to reach a deal on the so-called fiscal cliff would have led to so much sudden austerity that we might well have plunged back into recession. The sequester, by contrast, will probably cost “only” around 700,000 jobs.

      

But the looming mess remains a monument to the power of truly bad ideas — ideas that the entire Washington establishment was somehow convinced represented deep wisdom.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/22/opinion/krugman-sequester-of-fools.html?hp&_r=1&

 

The Republican caucus is in chaos....

Incapable of governing, incapable of leading......

Bernie Sanders

Today's news from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.):

Obama Presses for Stripped Down Fiscal Plan: President Obama sharply curtailed his ambitions for legislation to avert the year-end “fiscal cliff” on Friday, urging Congress to adopt a stopgap measure to keep benefits flowing to unemployed workers and prevent taxes from rising on income under $250,000 a year, The Washington Post reported. The plan should also “lay the groundwork” for action next year to spur economic growth and rein in the national debt, Obama said at a White House news conference.

House Caucus in Chaos: “The Republican caucus is in chaos,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said Friday after a humiliating setback for House Speaker John Boehner. Facing a conservative revolt within his caucus, the speaker on Thursday night cancelled a vote on his own plan to extend Bush-era tax cuts for all incomes up to $1 million. Sanders commented during his weekly national radio and Internet appearance on The... Thom Hartmann Program.

Social Security: The reaction of liberal lawmakers to President Obama’s plan to squeeze savings from Social Security benefits was swift and strong: Sen. Tom Harkin called it “a bad deal,” Sen. Sherrod Brown said, “I don’t like it,” and Sen. Sanders declared it “a significant benefit cut,” Congressional Quarterly reported.

Continue reading here: http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/news/?id=e2c3096f-d810-4625-acad-62cab3817f8e

The Economic Tsunami

Food for thought --

The fiscal cliff is a diversion: The derivatives tsunami and the dollar bubble

 

By Paul Craig Roberts
Posted on December 20, 2012 by Paul Craig Roberts

The “fiscal cliff” is another hoax designed to shift the attention of policymakers, the media, and the attentive public, if any, from huge problems to small ones.

The fiscal cliff is automatic spending cuts and tax increases in order to reduce the deficit by an insignificant amount over ten years if Congress takes no action itself to cut spending and to raise taxes. In other words, the “fiscal cliff” is going to happen either way.

The problem from the standpoint of conventional economics with the fiscal cliff is that it amounts to a double-barrel dose of austerity delivered to a faltering and recessionary economy. Ever since John Maynard Keynes, most economists have understood that austerity is not the answer to recession or depression.

Regardless, the fiscal cliff is about small numbers compared to the Derivatives Tsunami or to bond market and dollar market bubbles.

The fiscal cliff requires that the federal government cut spending by $1.3 trillion over ten years. The Guardian reports that means the federal deficit has to be reduced about $109 billion per year or 3 percent of the current budget. More simply, just divide $1.3 trillion by ten and it comes to $130 billion per year. This can be done by simply taking a three-month vacation each year from Washington’s wars.

The Derivatives Tsunami and the bond and dollar bubbles are of a different magnitude.

Last June 5 in “Collapse At Hand,” I pointed out that according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s fourth quarter report for 2011, about 95% of the $230 trillion in US derivative exposure was held by four US financial institutions: JP Morgan Chase Bank, Bank of America, Citibank, and Goldman Sachs.

Prior to financial deregulation, essentially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and the non-regulation of derivatives–a joint achievement of the Clinton administration and the Republican Party–Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank were commercial banks that took depositors’ deposits and made loans to businesses and consumers and purchased Treasury bonds with any extra reserves.

With the repeal of Glass-Steagall these honest commercial banks became gambling casinos, like the investment bank, Goldman Sachs, betting not only their own money but also depositors money on uncovered bets on interest rates, currency exchange rates, mortgages, and prices of commodities and equities.

These bets soon exceeded many times not only US GDP but world GDP. Indeed, the gambling bets of JP Morgan Chase Bank alone are equal to world Gross Domestic Product.

According to the first quarter 2012 report from the Comptroller of the Currency, total derivative exposure of US banks has fallen insignificantly from the previous quarter to $227 trillion. The exposure of the 4 US banks accounts for almost of all of the exposure and is many multiples of their assets or of their risk capital.

The Derivatives Tsunami is the result of the handful of fools and corrupt public officials who deregulated the US financial system. Today merely four US banks have derivative exposure equal to 3.3 times world Gross Domestic Product. When I was a US Treasury official, such a possibility would have been considered beyond science fiction.

Hopefully, much of the derivative exposure somehow nets out so that the net exposure, while still larger than many countries’ GDPs, is not in the hundreds of trillions of dollars. Still, the situation is so worrying to the Federal Reserve that after announcing a third round of quantitative easing, that is, printing money to buy bonds–both US Treasuries and the banks’ bad assets, the Fed has just announced that it is doubling its QE 3 purchases.

In other words, the entire economic policy of the United States is dedicated to saving four banks that are too large to fail. The banks are too large to fail only because deregulation permitted financial concentration, as if the Anti-Trust Act did not exist.

The purpose of QE is to keep the prices of debt, which supports the banks’ bets, high. The Federal Reserve claims that the purpose of its massive monetization of debt is to help the economy with low interest rates and increased home sales. But the Fed’s policy is hurting the economy by depriving savers, especially the retired, of interest income, forcing them to draw down their savings. Real interest rates paid on CDs, money market funds, and bonds are lower than the rate of inflation.

Moreover, the money that the Fed is creating in order to bail out the four banks is making holders of dollars, both at home and abroad, nervous. If investors desert the dollar and its exchange value falls, the price of the financial instruments that the Fed’s purchases are supporting will also fall, and interest rates will rise. The only way the Fed could support the dollar would be to raise interest rates. In that event, bond holders would be wiped out, and the interest charges on the government’s debt would explode.

With such a catastrophe following the previous stock and real estate collapses, the remains of people’s wealth would be wiped out. Investors have been deserting equities for “safe” US Treasuries.

This is why the Fed can keep bond prices so high that the real interest rate is negative.

The hyped threat of the fiscal cliff is immaterial compared to the threat of the derivatives overhang and the threat to the US dollar and bond market of the Federal Reserve’s commitment to save four US banks.

Once again, the media and its master, the US government, hide the real issues behind a fake one. The fiscal cliff has become the way for the Republicans to save the country from bankruptcy by destroying the social safety net put in place during the 1930s, supplemented by Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” in the mid-1960s.

Now that there are no jobs, now that real family incomes have been stagnant or declining for decades, and now that wealth and income have been concentrated in few hands is the time, Republicans say, to destroy the social safety net so that we don’t fall over the fiscal cliff.

In human history, such a policy usually produces revolt and revolution, which is what the US so desperately needs.

Perhaps our stupid and corrupt policymakers are doing us a favor after all.

Copyright © 2012 Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts [email him] was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. His home page is paulcraigroberts.org.


http://www.intrepidreport.com/archives/8503
 

The Disasterous Congress

Breaking: Lacking GOP support, Boehner pulls 'Plan B' vote --'Tea Party emboldened' 20 Dec 2012 Lacking enough support to pass a backup proposal to avert the "fiscal cliff," House Republican leaders on Thursday night pulled from the floor a vote on 'Plan B' legislation that would have preserved Bush-era tax rates for all earners making less than $1 million but raised rates on the country's top earners. Boehner and other GOP leaders had firmly indicated earlier Thursday that they had sufficient support to pass the Plan B legislation, along with another package of spending cuts. But a breakdown became evident after the GOP-dominated House only narrowly passed the package of spending reductions, which was intended to replace automatic defense cuts, or "sequestration." That measure, meant to encourage possible conservative dissenters to support the tax proposal, squeaked to victory by a margin of 215-209, with twenty-one Republicans voting against the bill.

G.O.P. Leaders in House Pull Tax Bill, Citing Lack of Votes 21 Dec 2012 House Republican leaders abruptly pulled their fallback tax bill from the floor Thursday night, conceding that they did not have the votes to pass it. The decision was a major setback for the speaker, who was pushing his so-called Plan B to prevent lower tax rates from expiring on most Americans. It came after the House had narrowly approved a plan to suspend planned Pentagon cuts [and replace them with cuts in domestic spending].

 

Obama proposes Social Security cuts 20 Dec 2012 The cuts in Social Security and other critical social programs proposed Tuesday by the Obama White House as part of negotiations with House Speaker John Boehner over the so-called "fiscal cliff" mark a watershed in US social policy. Obama has publicly proposed to cut future benefits for Social Security recipients, underlining the bipartisan agreement that the working class and the elderly, not Wall Street or the super-rich, must pay for the crisis of American capitalism. According to press reports Tuesday, the White House counter-offer to Boehner calls for reducing future cost-of-living increases in Social Security benefits by adopting an inflation index that is deliberately distorted to underestimate the amounts that the elderly will have to pay for the essentials of life.

The Sellout explained as only Charles Pierce can --

The Grand Sellout Emerges

By Charles P. Pierce

      

Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog

Our fearless Washington leaders approach the fiscal cliff.

I generally believe Ezra Klein when he talks about how everyone who matters is coming together to make a deal, so may I just congratulate all the important people on both sides of the aisle who have come together in semi-good faith to ram it to the rest of us. Really, kids, if this isn't really just a trial balloon big enough for the Macy's parade, well done.

On the spending side, the Democrats' headline concession will be accepting chained-CPI, which is to say, accepting a cut to Social Security benefits. Beyond that, the negotiators will agree to targets for spending cuts. Expect the final number here, too, to be in the neighborhood of $1 trillion, but also expect it to lack many specifics. Whether the cuts come from Medicare or Medicaid, whether they include raising the Medicare age, and many of the other contentious issues in the talks will be left up to Congress.

So here's where we sit. The Democrats, led by the president, who never is going to need to depend on Social Security, are prepared to concede on an issue that has absolutely nothing to do with the deficit. They are going to make life harder for millions of seniors. Social Security is now squarely "on the table" in any future budget negotiation. (Hey, who unplugged the third rail?) The simplest solution — raising the cap — is beyond discussion, now and forever. The "chained-CPI," which is a terrible idea on its own merits, as well as a piece of noxious moral sleight-of-hand, seeing as how it cuts benefits while pretending not to do so, is being adopted whole hog without a corresponding mechanism to raise more Social Security revenue to make up for the loss. If the president maintains his faith in the great god SimpsonBowles, the old folks will get a bump for only two years after the deal takes effect. Swell.

There are a couple of lines of thought here. For example, Paul Krugman is more optimistic.

Those cuts are a very bad thing, although there will supposedly be some protection for low-income seniors. But the cuts are not nearly as bad as raising the Medicare age, for two reasons: the structure of the program remains intact, and unlike the Medicare age thing, they wouldn't be totally devastating for hundreds of thousands of people, just somewhat painful for a much larger group. Oh, and raising the Medicare age would kill people; this benefit cut, not so much.

"Not so much"? That's what we get for a deal in which the president is simultaneously not even getting everything that he wants as regards the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. Granny needs to lose some weight anyway.

Quite honestly, the president's willingness to tinker this way with Social Security marks his presidency in a way that nothing else ever will. There is no economic need to do this to Social Security at all. There is no need for the program even to come up in the discussions. This locks Social Security forever into being defined for all political purposes as an "entitlement," and we all know that "entitlements" need to be reformed because everybody this president considers his primary constituencies say they must. It sets the stage for more concessions down the line by any Democratic president who doesn't possess the political momentum that the current president seems hellbent on squandering. This is that most horrible of Beltway concoctions — a deal for a deal's sake, a demonstration for the courtier press that Washington "works." (Chris Matthews last night said that he wanted a cliff-avoiding deal so that "Washington" could prove it can work again. He framed it around the events in Connecticut and gn control. These people think ... strangely.) If John Boehner brings home this deal, his caucus should name him emperor. If that caucus turns him down, they all should be placed in a locked ward for the duration of the president's second term. Meanwhile, David Gregory just had an orgasm you could hear on Mars.

UPDATE -- And, apparently, at the moment, the emperor has no votes. I am particularly amused by one element of the GOP reaction.

In spite of statements to the contrary just a week ago, House Republicans on Tuesday seemed almost uniformly resigned to some sort of tax rate increases on the nation's highest earners, though they remained committed to keeping that group as small as possible. "The principle of trying to limit the increases is a good one," said Representative Jason Chaffetz of Utah. "But now we've got to see more spending cuts."

Chaffetz, you may recall, was all over TV this weekend, using the "let's talk about mental health" dodge so that nobody talked about the country's lunatic infatuation with firearms. Not that Chaffetz will pay for it or anything.

Read more: Grand Bargain Sellout - The Grand Sellout Emerges - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/grand-bargain-sellout-121812#ixzz2Fboi8vdX

Charles P. Pierce

Charlie has been a working journalist since 1976. He is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America. He lives near Boston with his wife but no longer his three children.

Understanding the "Fiscal Cliff"

The first thing to know about the so-called "fiscal cliff" is that it's not a cliff—it's a choice. It's a choice between making the 1% richer at the expense of everyone else, or lifting up 100% of Americans. It's a choice between American prosperity and European austerity.

In this sharp new video, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich breaks down the fiscal choice in 2 minutes and 30 seconds—with pictures too. And he gives Democrats the inside scoop on how to fight and win this fiscal showdown for the middle class.

Even if you don't usually watch videos like this, you've got to watch this one. Reich's video on Mitt Romney's economic plan went viral—half a million people watched and shared it—because it was so illuminating. Share this one with your friends and family so they understand what's at stake now, and how we can win.

Grover’s Best Trick

Grover’s Best Trick

How he herds reporters. 

• By Jason Zengerle
• Published Nov 30, 2012

(Photo: Zuma Press, Inc./Alamy)

 

In November 1995, a National Journal reporter boldly went where no member of the mainstream media had gone before: the Washington, D.C., conference room of Americans for Tax Reform on a Wednesday morning. That’s where—and when—ATR’s president, Grover Norquist, had been convening a weekly confab for various conservative operatives for the past couple of years. “Jackets are off and participants devour bagels and cream cheese,” the article relayed. “The goal of the Wednesday meetings … is to make sure the leaders of all the major conservative organizations know what everybody is up to. ‘That way,’ [Norquist] said, ‘no one gets surprised.’ ” Since that story appeared nearly two decades ago, Norquist has invited so many Washington journalists to the sessions that they have become a set piece. “If you believe in a vast, right-wing conspiracy,” an NPR reporter told listeners in 2001, “this is its clubhouse.”

Of course, real conspirators don’t allow outsiders to eavesdrop on their scheming, any more than virtuoso puppet masters put their string-pulling on view. Yet Norquist has managed to be seen as both, largely thanks to the journalists he’s courted. (In a town where reporters can find it hard to get conservatives to return their calls, Norquist rolls out the red carpet for them.) As anti-tax dogma took hold of his party, he rode his media friendliness to disproportionate prominence. As that dogma is now threatening to crack during the negotiations over the fiscal cliff, he’s using it to claim the spotlight again.

Since 1986, Norquist has been getting Republican politicians to sign a pledge to never raise taxes. In the current, lame-duck Congress, 219 House members and 39 Senators have signed it [including Senator Scott Brown]. As the story is being framed in the press, the nation’s future hinges on those lawmakers’ fealty to one activist (or their fear of crossing him by breaking their promise). “Where do you stand on the pledge?” David Gregory asked New York GOP congressman Peter King last week on Meet the Press. “Can this be overcome?” But the media’s fixation on the pledge part of Norquist’s operation is misplaced. As National Review editor Rich Lowry recently wrote, “[E]veryone acts as if Grover is the instrument of the [Republican] party’s Babylonian captivity,” but his oath “represent[s] GOP orthodoxy” and a top priority of its biggest donors. Norquist was just savvy enough to get Republicans to promise to do something they were almost biologically required to do anyway—sort of like getting fish to pledge they won’t leave the water. If Republicans ultimately do agree to raise taxes as part of a fiscal-cliff deal, it will be because, evolutionarily speaking, they had no choice—not because they suddenly worked up the guts to buck Norquist.

In the meantime, Norquist has been even more solicitous toward the press than usual. Last Wednesday morning, right before his weekly meeting, he sat for an hourlong interview with Politico’s Mike Allen broadcast live on C-Span. “I have job security that most people don’t have, okay?” Norquist said. “At least the marijuana-legalization people could end up out of a job in a couple of years, if they win, right? We’re always going to feel that our taxes are too high.”


http://nymag.com/news/intelligencer/grover-norquist-2012-12/

 

A sensible alternative!

Instead of conceding entitlement reform to the Republicans, The Democrats should address the real entitlement problem, corporate welfare. (photo: Shawna Whelan)

Why Democrats Should Embrace "Entitlement Reform"

By Carl Gibson, Reader Supported News

30 November 12

Reader Supported News | Perspective
f a baseball player was on a hot home-run streak, and faced a pitcher who threw nothing but fastballs straight down the plate, wouldn't you be upset if the slugger let two perfectly good pitches go without swinging for the fences? If the batter struck out, would you walk out in disgust, or wonder which bookie paid off that batter?

 

The two issues dominating the "fiscal cliff" discussion have been the left's push to end the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2%, and the right's push to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, which they and the mainstream media punditocracy dubiously refer to as "entitlements." But the Democrats are whiffing on the biggest issue - which hasn't gotten any press - corporate tax loopholes and Wall Street speculation. The only "entitlements" we should be talking about cutting are the billions of dollars in corporate profits we're allowing to be offshored to tax-free bank accounts in the Channel Islands, and Wall Street traders making risky, tax-free speculative bets. Whatever bad deal this lame duck Congress makes, can and should be undone by the 113th Congress.

 

It would be a home run for Democrats like Alan Grayson, or Independents like Bernie Sanders, if they were to introduce a bill called the "Entitlement Reform Act of 2013," which could bring in the $1.5 trillion in corporate profits booked offshore but held in American banks and tax a third of it, and institute a $0.03 sales tax on risky Wall Street trading like the kind done in the derivatives and mortgage-backed securities markets. The first reform would bring be a $500 billion revenue boost over a ten-year period, the second would bring in between $350 billion and $1.5 trillion in a decade.

 

And the best part would be that both of those reforms would only affect the top 1% of the top 2%, while simultaneously providing enough money to both shore up the deficit and create new jobs.

 

Some pragmatists are arguing that the Republicans' expected caving on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy means that the Democrats will have to "give" them something in return. Since the expected "gift" is entitlement reform, the Democrats can simply answer with their dubiously-named legislation that targets the billions in corporate welfare that we give out to corporate tax dodgers and Wall Street speculators. If the Republicans are expecting us to cut back healthcare and pensions that people have been paying into their whole lives with each paycheck, in return for agreeing that the richest among us should pay a proportional share of their income in taxes like everyone else, then we should rightfully say, "Tough luck."

 

When someone says "entitlement," I immediately think of the spoiled 15-year-old son of a Wall Street banker walking around a Bentley dealership, eagerly picking out his own birthday present.

What I don't think of is a meager check that retirees need to meet their basic living expenses, which greedy CEOs and Wall Street bankers want for their own benefit.

 

If Democrats want to prove to us that they aren't the bought representatives of Wall Street and corporate America, they need to not only hold fast on Social Security and Medicare, but they need to stop whiffing on the word "entitlements," make that word synonymous with corporate and financial greed, and knock this "fiscal cliff" fastball out of the park.

 

If Republicans want their political opponents to promise them something, the only promise we should make is this - the Republican Party won't be rendered completely irrelevant until the 2014 midterms. Deal?

---

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Manchester, New Hampshire. You can contact Carl at carl@rsnorg.org This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.

 

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

 

http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/14798-focus-why-democrats-should-embrace-qentitlement-reformq

From Senator Bernie Sanders

As I’m sure you are aware, there is currently a major effort being waged by Wall Street CEOs, Republicans and some Democrats to do deficit reduction on the backs of the middle class and working families. This could mean, among other things, significant cuts to vital programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. President Obama and the Democrats won a decisive victory on Election Day. The people have spoken and the Democratic Leadership must make it very clear that they intend to stand with the middle class and working families of our country, and not the Big Money interests. This means that in the coming weeks and months the Democrats must hold the line in demanding that deficit reduction is done in a way that is fair -- and not on the backs of the elderly, the sick, children and the poor. As Congress reconvenes and addresses the so-called “fiscal cliff,” I have outlined several ways that we can do deficit reduction without cutting the programs that working families rely on most: At a time when the wealthiest people in our country are doing phenomenally well, we must eliminate the Bush tax cuts favoring the top 2 percent. At a time when corporate profits are soaring, we must end the absurd tax policy that allows about one-quarter of large, profitable corporations to pay nothing in federal income taxes. At a time when the federal treasury is losing over $100 billion annually because the wealthy and large corporations are stashing their money in tax havens in the Cayman Islands and elsewhere, we must pass real tax reform that ends this outrage. At a time when we spend almost as much as the rest of the world combined on defense, we must cut defense spending. There is also waste in other governmental agencies which must be eliminated. Now, is the time to hold Democrats accountable and ensure that we do deficit reduction in a way that is fair, while also protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Please stand with me in fighting for a deficit reduction plan which is fair -- Sign the petition calling on Congress to let the Bush tax cuts expire, while protecting vital programs. Let me be clear. Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit because it is funded independently by the payroll tax. In fact, the Social Security Trust Fund today, according to the Social Security Administration, has a $2.7 trillion surplus and can pay 100 percent of all benefits owed to every eligible American for the next 21 years. Social Security, as well as Medicare and Medicaid, must be protected. Poll after poll shows that the American people want to see deficit reduction done in a way that is fair. They do not want to see cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid while millionaires, billionaires and large corporations continue to receive huge tax breaks. In my view, if the Republicans continue to play an obstructionist role, the president should get out of the Oval Office and travel the country. If he does that, I believe that he will find that there is no state in the country, including those that are very red, where people believe that we should give huge tax breaks to millionaires and billionaires, while cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Right now, the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year. That means the only way that Republicans can extend tax breaks for the wealthy and cut vital programs is if Democrats let them. Sadly, virtually all Republicans and some Democrats are too willing to do deficit reduction in a way that hurts those who are already hurting. Don’t let them win. The Bush tax cuts must be allowed to expire. Please sign the petition today. I look forward to working with President Obama and all members of Congress to do deficit reduction in a way that finally asks the wealthiest people in our country to pay their fair share, and that recognizes the needs of working families. Despite the fact that we just won a major electoral victory over Big Money, Wall Street CEOs, big corporations and the millionaires and billionaires are not giving up. Defeating them will take a major grass-roots effort with millions of people getting involved in this fight. Please, stand with me today. Thank you, Senator Bernie Sanders

Fiscal Policy: Stick to the Facts

It's difficult for the Tea Baggers to accept the FACTS, but Folks, it's time!
You want to be brain-washed, please do it on your own dime and let's restore fiscal sanity.

From: The Rachel Maddow Fan Page.

Thanks to Meme GOP for sharing this with us.

Read more facts about the "fiscal cliff" here: http://factcheck.org/2012/11/facts-falling-off-the-fiscal-cliff/