The claim that social programs are being gutted to benefit the American people and create jobs is a grotesque lie. The “pain” will be inflicted upon the working class, the poor, the elderly and the sick by two parties, the Democrats and Republicans, which are equally committed to “doing the right thing” for big business and Wall Street. The plan that is being hashed out behind the backs of the people has no more to do with providing jobs than the bailout of the banks nearly three years ago.
In advance of Thursday’s talks, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal, the newspapers of record of the political establishment and the financial elite, all cited senior Democratic officials as reporting that Obama was going into the meeting with an offer to carry out sweeping cuts in Social Security and Medicare, the bedrock program upon which millions of older Americans depend for retirement income and health care.
In return, the administration is seeking what amounts to small change in revenues through a Republican agreement to accept minor tax changes that would close loopholes benefiting private jet owners, hedge fund managers and oil corporations. While such changes will do little to reduce the federal deficit, they are meant to provide the administration with a political fig leaf, allowing it to falsely claim that the punishing cutbacks to come are being implemented as part of a “balanced” program in which the financial aristocracy is doing its share.
The pretext for these talks is the looming deadline for Congress to approve an increase in the federal debt ceiling. According to official estimates, the federal government already broke through the $14.3 trillion limit in May, but by August 2 various accounting tricks will have been exhausted, raising the specter of a default that could trigger a sharp intensification of the US and world financial crisis.
Both the Republican and the Democratic leaderships have seized upon the debt ceiling and the prospect of default as justification for reversing social reforms that go back more than a century.
The White House has publicly announced that it is now pushing for $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade. Even if it were to get the changes in tax policy that it is seeking, more than four-fifths of this amount would be the result of spending cuts, the lion’s share affecting essential social programs.
As the Washington Post reported Thursday in advance of the White House meeting: “President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.”
via www.wsws.org
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