The agreement reached by President Obama with Republican leadership, including a two-year extension of tax cuts for the wealthiest in return for a one-year extension of modest tax credits and unemployment insurance for families decimated by joblessness, is the wrong way to stimulate our economy.
The payroll tax holiday is particularly troubling for women, who rely more on Social Security than men do. The "holiday" benefits higher income people more than those in the middle or bottom, excludes retirees -- including those forced into early retirement due to joblessness -- and excludes state and local government workers at a time when they are facing a pay freeze. Worst of all, it slashes Social Security's dedicated funding stream -- something Republican leaders and other anti-New Deal forces have wanted to do for decades.
http://www.now.org/...
I no longer feel that I am standing on solid ground because of all the giveaways at my expense for benefits for the very wealthy, for corporations, for war spending.
We have borrowed and borrowed and borrowed to fund benefits for the very wealthy, for corporations, for war spending, while working Americans have lost jobs and income and homes and access to health care and decent education, not to mention decent roads and bridges, solvency in their retirement accounts, and many of them have been reduced to homelessness, joblessness and bankruptcy. Our food banks for those who have been reduced to poverty by the Bush Tax Cuts are empty and every day is a scramble for the people who work there to provide for the needy. For example in Washington State and across the country:
Pierce County food banks face growing demand
Pierce County food banks are seeing additional demand for services as more families seek help during the worst economic downturn in 70 years. Food-assistance programs operated by the state Department of Agriculture have seen a 27 percent increase in demand the past two years, state officials said.
.... One in seven Washington families is experiencing hunger, state officials say. The most recent U.S. Department of Agriculture report shows 14 percent of households in the state were unsure of how they will put enough food on the table, compared to 10 percent three years ago.
Read more: http://www.thenewstribune.com/...
Long lines, empty shelves and Thanksgiving chickens are just a few symptoms of the economic downturn's effect on food banks and community pantries across the country....
http://articles.cnn.com/...
Now some very Machiavellian maneuvering have been carried out in order to put Social Security and its $2.6 trillion fund on the chopping block for privatization and delivery to greedy Wall Street CEOs. It appears their million dollar and billion dollar bonuses have not been enough for them.
The first step was to create an unneeded deficit commission larded with social conservatives like vitriolic Alan Simpson, renown hater of social security who, true to form, snarled about "Social Security ...it's like a milk cow with 310 million tits," Dr. "NO!" Tom Coburn, Judd Gregg, Congressman "A Roadmap for America's Future" Paul Ryan, two Democratic social conservatives, Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, to balance out moderate Richard Durbin, an 18-member panel populated with 15 conservatives, two liberals and a moderate.
The commission was slightly defanged with a requirement of a 14-vote majority. Surprisingly, the commission failed to raise the necessary 14 to put forth the Simpson agenda, but the goal was accomplished: Putting out the word that Social Security was unacceptable, a far too costly entitlement that contributed to the national deficit.
As it now will, because of the Senate’s version of the Bush tax cuts to benefit millionaires and billionaires and corporations at the expense of America’s working people includes a "payroll tax holiday" which will choke off Social Security’s dedicated funding stream and threaten its long-term integrity.
It will be necessary to borrow more money to pay out Social Security benefits in the year 2011 because of the dedicated funding stream being canceled by the "payroll tax holiday," which will add to the national deficit, which will give Alan Simpson an excellent excuse to pounce on the $2.6 trillion Social Security fund he hates to see not held by Wall Street.
Such spending still necessitate raising the deficit ceiling, triggering the fiscal bloodbath that Simpson has wet dreams about:
"I can't wait for the blood bath in April," said Alan Simpson at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast roundtable with reporters this morning. "It won't matter whether two of us have signed this or 14 or 18. When debt limit time comes, they're going to look around and say, 'What in the hell do we do now? We've got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give 'em a piece of meat, real meat, off of this package.' And boy the bloodbath will be extraordinary."
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/...
You know, I think that there is something very, very seriously wrong with the former Senator from Wyoming. There might be something wrong with Wyoming too. Isn't that where warmonger Dick Cheney is from?
Is there something in the water in Wyoming?