This blog is cross-posted at StewartAcuff.com
With the silly, stupid sequester still not fully felt, word is that President Obama and some group of Republican Members of Congress will meet soon to try to negotiate the so-called “Grand Bargain.” Everyone knows the radical rightwing Republicans will demand cuts in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Of course, cuts to those programs will have terrible results:
1. They would hurt our elders and disabled.
2. They would further undermine belief and trust in those programs, lowering support.
3. They would open the flood gates to cut every program intended to mitigate or
ameliorate poverty.
4. Those cuts would take away so much of the Democratic message.
There is no good reason for the President or Democratic Members of Congress to agree to any cut in those programs.
As any Mayor or city councilman in America can tell you, don’t sell out your most loyal constituents on their most important issues.
We simply have to say NO to any budget issues that would widen inequality.
In fact, we must learn to play defense and offense at the same time on inequality. Of course we have to begin with a simple demand to narrow the oligarchic gap between the rich and the rest of us, keep the demand on for jobs and a raise in the minimum wage, and organizing and collective bargaining rights.
But we gotta hold on to what we have while we struggle for the rest due us.
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Stewart Acuff is the former organizing Director of the AFL-CIO. Acuff has also written two books: Playing Bigger Than You Are: A Life in Organizing, and Getting America Back to Work.
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