Tag Archives: deficit

The Strengthen Social Security Campaign

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Social Security is once again under attack.
Time after time Social Security has come under attack. Do you remember the Bush “privatization” campaign a few years ago? Each time the attack uses a different myth, repeated over and over. Then, in between attacks, the myths continue circulating. This time they’re trying to make people think that Social Security contributes to the budget deficit. It doesn’t. They say this because so many people are worried about budget deficits. If polling showed that people were worried that their arms are going to turn into green cheese, they would be repeating and repeating that Social Security is the reason your arms are turning into green cheese. Sheesh!
In response to the latest attack a coalition of groups has formed to fight back and protect Social Security, demanding that Congress not make any benefit cuts. The coalition represents 30 million members, who are asked to remind elected officials that Social Security remains the “third rail” of American politics and that any sort of benefit cuts are opposed by wide majorities, from liberals to Tea Partiers.
The coalition is saying Strengthen Social Security, Don’t Cut It. Their website is strengthensocialsecurity.org and its blog is at strengthensocialsecurity.org/blog.
Most important, its petition is available to sign here.

The National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility is trying to cut Social Security benefits. We can’t let that happen.
Can you sign our urgent petition to the Commission?
Social Security belongs to the people who have worked hard all their lives and contributed to it. Social Security is a promise that must not be broken. If you pay in, then you earn the right to benefits for yourself, your spouse and your dependent children when you retire, experience a severe disability, or die.
We need to strengthen Social Security, not cut it. That is why I oppose any cuts to Social Security benefits, including increasing the retirement age. I also oppose any effort to privatize Social Security, in whole or in part.

Meet Billy Bankster! Please watch this video from the coalition:

Here are videos from the launch event. First is Terry O’Neill, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW):

Continue reading →

Alan Greenspan And Things Forgotten

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Ah, the things we forget.
This was then: Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan greenlighted the Bush tax cuts, saying that Clinton was paying down the country’s debt too fast as a result of modest taxes on the wealthy. So the Bush tax cuts for the rich passed, which immediately brought us the huge, huge deficits. Bush called the deficits “Incredibly positive news” because they would force a debt crisis.
In the 80’s Alan Greenspan’s Social Security Commission raised taxes and cut benefits on working people, providing a huge amount of revenue which was then handed out as tax cuts for the rich. And now, rather than pay back that money borrowed from Social Security from where it went, our elites are insisting that Social Security must be cut back, we must all work until 70, etc.
Decades earlier Alan Greenspan was smack in the center of the Ayn Rand* cult that called the non-wealthy “parasites,”

Mr. Greenspan had married a member of Rand’s inner circle, known as the Collective, that met every Saturday night in her New York apartment. . . . Mr. Greenspan wrote: “ ‘Atlas Shrugged’ is a celebration of life and happiness. Justice is unrelenting. Creative individuals and undeviating purpose and rationality achieve joy and fulfillment. Parasites who persistently avoid either purpose or reason perish as they should.”

This is now: Greenspan Calls for Congress to Let All Bush Tax Cuts Expire

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, whose backing of George W. Bush’s 2001 tax cuts helped persuade Congress to pass them, said lawmakers should allow the reductions to expire at the end of this year. “They should follow the law and let them lapse,” Greenspan said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Conversations with Judy Woodruff,” citing a need for the tax revenue to reduce the federal budget deficit.

And there was his “I was wrong” testimony,

… a humbled Mr. Greenspan admitted that he had put too much faith in the self-correcting power of free markets and had failed to anticipate the self-destructive power of wanton mortgage lending.
“Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief,” he told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Alan Greenspan is in his 80s. He forgets — or at least wants us to forget. Don’t let anyone forget.
The debt crisis was the plan, right there for everyone to see:

  • Step 1: Cut taxes to “cut the allowance” of government so that it can’t function on the side of We, the People. Intentionally force the government into greater and greater debt.
  • Step 2: Use the debt as a reason to cut the things government does for We, the People. When the resulting deficits pile up scare people that the government is “going bankrupt” so they’ll let you sell off the people’s assets and “privatize” the functions of government. Of course, insist that putting taxes back where they were will “harm the economy.”

So don’t forget.
—
* One more thing not to forget. I mentioned Ayn Rand. Rand’s work is very popular among conservatives now. It forms a core justification for their “on your own” philosophy praising the wealthy and discarding the rest. So it is useful to explore the formation and core of this philosophy. Early in her writings Rand became fascinated with a serial killer named William Hickman. Rand wrote that the serial killer was an “ideal man,” a superior form of human because he didn’t let society impose their morals on him. He didn’t worry about what others thought and just did as he pleased.
“Other people do not exist for him, and he does not see why they should,” Rand wrote. Hickman had “no regard whatsoever for all that society holds sacred, and with a consciousness all his own. He has the true, innate psychology of a Superman. He can never realize and feel ‘other people.'” She considered these to be good qualities! And so does her cult.
This is the foundation of the modern “tea party” conservative thinking. So when you look at the modern capitalism that has grown up around Rand’s philosophy and the big corporations that are chewing up the planet to enrich a very few at the expense of the rest of us, and think it seems sort of psychopathic, maybe that’s because it literally is.
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Wait, Who Said We Want Less Government Protecting And Empowering Us?

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Cut spending? Wait – where did that terrible idea come from? Government is We, the People and its job is to protect and empower us. Why in the world would we want to cut back on that?
WSJ today, The Bush Tax Cuts and the Deficit Myth, “Runaway government spending, not declining tax revenues, is the reason the U.S. faces dramatic budget shortfalls for years to come.”
Wait a minute. Back up. Where did this come from? Who, anywhere, any time agreed to cut government? Why do We, the People allow these anti-government zealots to pre-frame the budget deficit as a problem of government doing too much for us? Which government function is the “too much” part? Reigning in runaway corporations? Consumer protection? Worker safety inspections? Food safety inspections? Maintaining and modernizing our infrastructure? Educating people? The courts? Keeping the water and air clean? There is a long list of things our government does for us. Why would we want less of that?
Imagine if Democrats voted to just put $500 billion a year in rockets and shot the rockets at the moon, and spent the next 30 years demanding that conservatives do their part and raise taxes to pay for that. Do you think the top 1% would just say, “OH, OK, let’s do that.” Of course they wouldn’t.
But under anti-government conservatives all of these things that our government does to protect and empower us were cut to the bone or just ended, resulting in mine disasters, bank meltdowns, predatory corporations scamming all of us, and the BP oil spill. We, the people got poorer and less secure while the rich got really, really richer.
Why would anyone in their right mind think that was a good idea?
Conservatives cut taxes on the rich, resulting in the greatest concentration of wealth ever. The entire economy turned into an everything-to-the-top vacuum cleaner scheme, filled with scams shaking down and fleecing We, the People of everything we have and delivering it to a few wealthy corporation-owners. And then we get this bamboozlement that “the deficit” is out of control, so we have to cut back on anything that remains of government working for We, the People? I don’t think so.
Think about the level of bamboozlement that is going on here. Conservatives cut taxes on the rich, and then spend the next 30 years saying, “OK, now you have to do your part and cut the things government does for the people.” The whole thing was a scheme to deliver power to a few at the top. In Reagan Revolution Home To Roost: America Drowning In Debt you can see the step-by-step outline of the plan, in their own words. The deficit plan was right there for everyone to see:

  • Step 1: Cut taxes to “cut the allowance” of government so that it can’t function on the side of We, the People. Intentionally force the government into greater and greater debt.
  • Step 2: Use the debt as a reason to cut the things government does for We, the People. When the resulting deficits pile up scare people that the government is “going bankrupt” so they’ll let you sell off the people’s assets and “privatize” the functions of government. Of course, insist that putting taxes back where they were will “harm the economy.”
  • Step 3: Blame liberals for the disastrous effects of spending cutbacks.

So when did We, the People agree to this one-way bargain, cut taxes for the rich and cut what government does for us? We didn’t, and we should stop acting like we did.
Every single one of us knows that the deficits are the result of tax cuts for the rich and huge military spending increases. If we want to fix the deficit problem we know exactly what to do.
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Deficits: Get The Money From Where The Money Went

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
McClatchy news story, No full Social Security benefits until age 70?

Young Americans might not get full Social Security retirement benefits until they reach age 70 if some trial balloons that prominent lawmakers of both parties are floating become law.

Don’t fall for it. Social Security did not contribute to the deficits or debt, it ran a huge surplus. That surplus was supposed to be set aside. Instead it was handed out to the very wealthy as tax cuts. Now the country needs to start paying it back to the elderly, and to prevent us from getting it back from where it went — the wealthy few — they’re instead talking about making people wait until age 70 to retire, cutting benefits, etc.
Every one of us knows that the budget deficits come from the tax cuts and military spending increases of recent decades. But every one of us also knows that the beneficiaries of those tax cuts and military spending use their wealth and power to corrupt the political system, preventing us from restoring sanity to our governance.
Before the tax cuts on the top rates and military spending increases we didn’t have these deficit/debt problems, we maintained our infrastructure, provided educations, we even spent enough on our military to oppose the Soviet Union globally. The country worked better then. When top tax rates were cut from 90% the result was immediately deficits, then under Reagan came the really big cuts that led to the “structural” deficits and the huge debt increases and resulting interest load.
Since those tax cuts we have seen so many transformations for the worse. The wealthy now dominate every single part of our politics. Instead of having to build a fortune over time people can now reap a windfall from quick buck schemes — so that is what people focus on. When upper income was taxed at a high rate people built equity over time that, when sold, was taxed at only half that rate, and people became wealthy. When it took time to build a fortune companies had long-term strategies that depended on serving customers, solid surrounding communities with solid infrastructure, supply chains, experienced workers, etc. Now you can make your fortune selling off those things and pocketing the proceeds.
Those tax cuts were the direct cause of the deficit and debt problem. The military increases are a second cause of the problem. Social Security was never a cause of the problem. The clear way to fix the problem is to restore those tax rates and cut the military budget to pre-Cold War levels. The Soviet Union is long gone.
So what do we do about it?
What can we do about this? Learn the facts. This is a strategic assault on Social Security that has been underway for a long time.
Spread the word. Tell everyone that Social Security did not contribute to the deficit, tax cuts for the wealthy and military spending are the reason we have these deficits and raising taxes at the top and cutting military spending will do much more than cutting Social Security to help solve the problem.
Start calling members of Congress and telling them we will not tolerate Social Security cuts. Tell everyone you know, family members, friends and everyone else to call.
Join Social Security Works.
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The Real Deficit Is Jobs!

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
The real deficit is jobs. That is one more of those things that everyone can see in front of their faces, but we’re told it isn’t what it is. There aren’t enough jobs, and we’re being told this is our fault because we wanted pensions and good wages and vacations and respect and dignity and please, sir, just a little slice of the pie.
In case you haven’t noticed, the world’s economy is suddenly undergoing a classic “Shock Doctrine”-style, coordinated propaganda attack. The wealthy and powerful, having insisted that countries cut their taxes and run up debt, now insist that the middle class and poor must work harder, have their pensions reduced, sell off (to them) their publicly-held resources, and take other “austerity” steps to pay off the debt that these lazy, parasitic peasants dared to run up.
The excuse is that “the markets” will “lose confidence” in us. Apparently we aren’t working the salt mines hard enough. “The markets” — that’s the crowd who got in trouble and insisted that the world would end unless we immediately handed over to them all the rest of the money in the world — will “lose confidence” in our ability to work the mines hard enough, and will cut us off, unless we cut our pensions, sell off (to them) our resources, and promise never to be lazy and make demands for better wages, pensions, workplace safety, and do it now.
The real deficit is jobs.
History teaches that the way out of an economic slowdown is to invest in infrastructure, education and modernizing manufacturing.
Slactivist said it best the other day,

This calls to mind an old story:

But knowing their hypocrisy, he said unto them, “Why are you putting me to the test? Bring me a dime and let me see it.”
And they brought one. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this — FDR’s or Herbert Hoover’s?”
They answered, “Roosevelt’s.”
And he said unto them, “Right. So shut up. Have you morons already forgotten the 20th Century? When the choice is between imitating what worked and what really, really didn’t work, why are you pretending it’s terribly complicated?”
And after that, no one dared to ask him any question.

I’m not an economist, but we’ve got five applicants for every single job opening. If you tell me that the best response to that situation is to lay off hundreds of thousands of teachers, I will not accept that this means that you’re smarter and more expert than I am. I will instead conclude — regardless of your prestige or position or years of study — that you’re a moral imbecile.

According to the Labor Department,

By the end of 2009, the jobless rate stood at 10.0 percent and the number of unemployed persons at 15.3 million. Among the unemployed, 4 in 10 (6.1 million) had been jobless for 27 weeks or more, by far the highest proportion of long-term unemployment on record, with data back to 1948.

That’s right, it was the policies of austerity that created a depression, and the policies of job-creation, infrastructure investment and taxing the wealthy to pay for it that got us out. But that was back when We, the People were still in charge.
In other news:
Number Of Millionaires Grew Amid Recession.

The rich grew richer last year, even as the world endured the worst recession in decades.

Top 1 Percent of Americans Reaped Two-Thirds of Income Gains in Last Economic Expansion, Income Concentration in 2007 Was at Highest Level Since 1928, New Analysis Shows,

Two-thirds of the nation’s total income gains from 2002 to 2007 flowed to the top 1 percent of U.S. households, and that top 1 percent held a larger share of income in 2007 than at any time since 1928, according to an analysis of newly released IRS data by economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez.
During those years, the Piketty-Saez data also show, the inflation-adjusted income of the top 1 percent of households grew more than ten times faster than the income of the bottom 90 percent of households.

Top 1% Increased Their Share of Wealth in Financial Crisis,

According to his analysis, the top 1% held 34.6% of all national wealth in 2007. By Dec. 31, 2009, they held 35.6%.
Meanwhile, share of national wealth held by the bottom 90% fell to 25% from 27%.

Corporate Wealth Share Rises for Top-Income Americans

In 2003 the top 1 percent of households owned 57.5 percent of corporate wealth, up from 53.4 percent the year before, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis of the latest income tax data.
. . . For every group below the top 1 percent, shares of corporate wealth have declined since 1991.
. . . Long-term capital gains were taxed at 28 percent until 1997, and at 20 percent until 2003, when rates were cut to 15 percent. The top rate on dividends was cut to 15 percent from 35 percent that year.

See if you can make the connection. They want us to cut back our pensions, cut our wages, sell off our resources and work harder, to pay back the money that was borrowed and handed to them.
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Deficit Deception Risks Depression

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
The deficit problem can be summed up very simply: the public thinks Obama’s policies created a huge deficit. Never mind that it was Bush’s deficit — the public doesn’t know that. This misunderstanding is leading Washington to take steps that will throw the economy into depression.
According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner | NPR Congressional Battleground Poll,

By 57 to 37 percent, voters in these 60 Democratic seats believe that President Obama’s economic policies have produced record deficits while failing to slow job losses — and not averted a crisis or laid a foundation for future growth.

The public believes the record deficits were caused by Obama’s policies because:
1) Conservatives have pursued a strategic propaganda campaign to make the public believe this. They have used charts that show Bush’s 2009 budget as Obama’s, headlines that say this, repeatedly said it over the radio and conservative TV networks, etc.
2) The administration and supporters haven’t responded to this campaign in any way, didn’t seem to understand there even was a campaign to blame Obama for Bush’s deficits, and now appear to believe it themselves.
Isn’t this the story of the last few decades? Conservatives wage a strategic propaganda campaign to convince the public of XXX. Democrats don’t respond, don’t even understand there is a propaganda campaign being waged, and in time begin to support the conservative narrative.
But this time it is absolutely dead serious. The correct understanding of the cause of this deficit is absolutely crucial because doing the wrong thing now will throw the economy into depression.
The economy is on a precipice. Unemployment remains close to 10% with no help in sight and help for the unemployed running out. Economists are trying to tell Washington that more stimulus is needed, that it is crucial to directly create jobs, that the unemployed must receive checks and health care, and that cutting back now is exactly the wrong thing to do. Paul Krugman and others are becoming more and more alarmed about this. But with the public believing that the government is about to go broke, the political will can not form for doing the right thing.
But there are perceptions and then there are facts. It is just a fact that the huge $1.4 trillion deficit was Bush’s 2009 budget, and that “Obama spending” contributed very little to that deficit. It is just a fact that the cause of current economic trouble is that the “stimulus bill” was inadequate, and its focus on tax cuts was a wasted effort. It is just a fact that letting unemployment benefits expire and refusing to pass job-creation programs will force the economy to turn back down. This is a mistake in policy caused by an intentional engineering of false perceptions.
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Deficit Commission Co-Chair: Social Security T-Bills Have “Been Used”

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It’s astonishing, watch the video to see Alan Simpson, Co-Chair of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (“Deficit Commission”) explain that buyers of US T-Bills don’t necessarily need to get paid back because the money has “been used”!
Background: In the 1980s the Social Security payroll tax was increased, supposedly to set aside funds to cover the retirement of the post-WWII baby-boomer generation. But this extra revenue was instead used to give huge tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. (Yes, that’s right, they taxed working people and used the money to cut taxes for the rich.) So now that the boomers are retiring the money is needed. They want those bonds paid back now to cover Social Security payments.
The Commission: Now there is the Deficit Commission looking into how to raise money to cover what the government handed out as tax cuts to the rich. Rather than get the money from where the money went, the plutocrats are instead trying to convince people that it would make more sense to just cut Social Security instead, so they don’t have to pay it back. The commission is meeting in secret, preparing to recommend cutting Social Security benefits. Hence the nickname for the Commission: “Catfood Commission,” because cutting Social Security would force as many as 1.5 million old people into poverty and eating cat food for dinner because it costs less.
After Bush and Wall Street destroyed the economy older people were laid off in waves (because they’re past a certain age), can’t get jobs (because they’re old), now have been denied extended unemployment and denied COBRA subsidies. Now they’re called “lazy”. They’re threatened with the humiliation of drug tests. And finanlly, the Catfood Commission, meeting in secret, threatens any retirement security they have. Digby calls it “simple cruelty.” And, as sTiVo pointed out in a comment at Open Left yesterday,

Since raising the retirement age is now on the table as a solution to the non-problem of Social Security, it is VITAL to raise this issue. WHAT JOBS????

Here is a simple idea for the deficit commission: everyone knows — every one of us knows — that the deficit was caused by tax cuts for the rich and huge increases in military spending. So to fix the deficit … Duh? Can we connect the dots?
Connect the dots:But connecting those dots between the obvious causes of the deficit and the way to fix the deficit is beyond the mental abilities of people in “The Village.”
The Simpson Video: Alex Lawson of of Social Security Works confronted Simpson leaving one of the secret meetings Thursday with a video camera and asked some questions about this. The video is above, transcript excerpts below: (h/t Jane Hamsher)
LAWSON: But what about the $180 billion in surplus that it brings in every year?
SIMPSON: There is no surplus in there. It’s a bunch of IOUs. … It’s 2.5 trillion bucks in IOUs which have been used to build the interstate highway system and all of the things people have enjoyed since it has been set up.
LAWSON: Two wars, tax cuts for the wealthy.
Jane Hamsher writes,

Simpson starts from the premise that the Treasury will default on the bonds issued to the Social Security trust fund, because all the best people apparently know that it’s better to default on America’s senior citizens and plunge them into poverty than it is to default on, say, the Chinese.
. . . The commission is also looking into cutting Medicare benefits, because the deal guaranteeing no-bid Medicare contracts to the pharmaceutical industry by both Republicans and Democrats can’t possibly be abrogated. The committee claims it’s independent, but it’s not THAT independent. So, old people, too bad for you.

This is really important. They increased the Social Security tax on working people, gave the money out as tax cuts for the wealthy, created deficits on purpose to defund government, created a huge debt mess, and now the next stage of this plan is to gut social programs.
This is what the Deficit Commission is about. Tax cuts for the rich and military spending caused the borrowing and raising taxes on the rich can stop it. But the plan was to force a perception of a debt emergency to stampede people into accepting a dismantling of government that works for We, the People, and provides for us, empowers us and protects us. This is the confrontation of plutocracy vs democracy. We can’t let them get away with it.
What can you do? Visit Social Security Works, get on their mailing list or follow them on Twitter.
Get mad.
And get informed.
This post originated at Open Left.

Obama: We’ve Been Outflanked, Cap & Trade Dead

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
The headline of my local paper today is Obama: Act on clean energy. (But a different headline online – do they do that just to mess up bloggers?)
In the speech the President paid homage to President Carter’s efforts to change America’s energy policies, saying,

For decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered. For decades, we’ve talked and talked about the need to end America’s century-long addiction to fossil fuels. And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires. Time and again, the path forward has been blocked — not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.

Outflanked
Then the President said we have been outflanked on the coming green manufacturing revolution by countries like China,

The consequences of our inaction are now in plain sight. Countries like China are investing in clean energy jobs and industries that should be right here in America. Each day, we send nearly $1 billion of our wealth to foreign countries for their oil. And today, as we look to the Gulf, we see an entire way of life being threatened by a menacing cloud of black crude.

Cap And Trade Dead
In the Huffington Post today, Teryn Norris, Director of Americans for Energy Leadership writes that the President also signaled the death of cap and trade legislation,

Instead of using last night’s prime-time opportunity to push cap and trade … President Obama pressed the reset button on energy and climate policy, saying he was “happy to look at other ideas and approaches from either party, as long they seriously tackle our addiction to fossil fuels.” He made no mention of setting a price on carbon or establishing an emissions cap and trade system.

Others are trying to get things done on this front. Norris discusses the emerging Innovation Consensus,

The energy innovation consensus currently includes dozens of Nobel Laureates, Breakthrough Institute, Brookings Institution, National Commission on Energy Policy, Third Way, Association of American Universities, Clean Air Task Force, Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Google, and Americans for Energy Leadership, among others. The latest group to join is the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC), made up of several of the nation’s top business leaders: Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, John Doerr, Chad Holliday, Norm Augustine, Ursula Burns, and Tim Solso. Last week, these leaders released a new report, “A Business Plan for America’s Energy Future,” calling for major new federal investment in clean energy technology RD&D — at least $16 billion annually, more than triple the current level (see our news roundup).

Here is the problem. Action on energy requires direct government action and rejection of deficit hysteria to do it. But every single initiative of the Obama Presidency has been blocked by powerful interests, playing on the use of the filibuster on almost every major bill in the Senate. Health care reform was severely weakened by the pharmaceutical and insurance lobbies. Financial reform has been severely weakened by the financial lobbies. Jobs measures and further stimulus have been blocked by a strategic lobbying campaign to make people think the Bush-created deficit must be cut first. Now cap and trade may have been killed by the oil and gas lobbies.
We are in a direct confrontation between the big corporations and We, the People over who will run things and control the resources of the United States, and We, the People are losing. There is time to turn it around, but only if we recognize this battle for what it is.
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Deficit Cutters – Here’s Your First Trillion

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Today the country is looking for ways to cut spending and borrowing. Yet military spending, the biggest spending item in the budget, is barely part of the discussion — obviously because of the amount of campaign and lobbying dollars it generates.
The corrupting influence of lobbying money is clear: the fact that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 has not yet penetrated the bubble around the country’s capital. In fact, military spending has soared in recent years:
Military_spending_chart
(Source http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/ Includes DOD, Veterans, Foreign military aid, Foreign economic aid. Does not include military share of debt interest.)
Because of this application of lobbying dollars our military spending vastly surpasses the amount spent by the rest of the world, and dominates our country’s budget:
Military_spending_chart
(This is discretionary budget. Source http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/6/175138/6287/942/491304)
Now a bipartisan commission is willing to take this on. Commission outlines ways to cut defense spending by $1T over the next decade,

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out options the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

Task force sees Pentagon cuts key to US budget fix,

U.S. lawmakers and watchdog groups on Friday called for a dramatic revamp of the defense budget to reverse widening U.S. deficits, including termination of the $382 billion Lockheed Martin Corp (LMT.N) F-35 fighter.

This should be a litmus test to determine the seriousness and honesty of any deficit cutters. Do they take on the big lobbying interests, or do they take it out on the poor and elderly. We’ll see. The record so far is not good.
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Conservatives Call For Massive Deficit Spending To Create JOBS

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
Saying that the Obama “stimulus” was not big enough, conservatives are demanding that the government massively increase deficit spending to create badly-needed jobs. Newt Gingrich, at the conservative media outlet Human Events, calls for an Economic Freedom Act that includes,

• Reducing the payroll tax by half for 2010…;
• Eliminating the capital gains tax …;
• Reducing the corporate tax rate to 12.5% …;
• Permanently eliminating the death tax … ; [note – what he refers to as a “death tax” is an income tax on wealthy children – DJ]

Each of these tax cuts demanded by conservatives would greatly increase the deficit. Many other conservative organizations and politicians are joining this demand for massive deficit spending to create jobs.
In the article, Gingrich also criticized the size of the Obama stimulus because it did not create enough jobs, writing, “The Obama stimulus has clearly failed. It’s time to get back to what we know works for job creation. 2+2=4.”
Gingrich was right that the stimulus was insufficient. The CBO recently reported that the stimulus put up to 2.8 million people to work, lowered the unemployment rate by up to 1.5% and boosted the GDP by up to 4.2%. But the conservative-created job and recession crisis is much, much worse than that. We need emergency action to create 10 million jobs!
Tax cuts are the wrong approach because they would also reduce the country’s ability to maintain and modernize the infrastructure while increasing the problem of extreme concentration of wealth. Economists say that tax cuts are not effective at creating jobs (and create structural deficit problems), while directly creating jobs through infrastructure investment also leaves behind … badly-needed infrastructure.

Tax Cuts Caused The Deficits, Therefore…

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
No serious person denies that Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts and military increases threw the country into a pattern of borrowing and borrowing that we have not escaped. When Reagan took office the national debt was $995 billion. When Reagan left office it was $2.87 trillion and climbing fast.
No serious person denies that Bush’s 2001 tax cuts and continued military increases dramatically worsened the problem. Bush’s last budget year ended with a record single-year deficit of $1.4 trillion.
As the country discusses what to do about the borrowing the elephant in the room is that everyone understands that restoring top tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting the military budget in half would solve the problem completely. But we can’t do that. We can’t even discuss it.
And we all know why. And we all know why. It is because the Reagan Revolution transformed the country from a democracy to a plutocracy — a country run by and for the wealthy.
Such sensible and simple ideas are considered off-limits. To even bring up the idea of restoring tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting military spending invites terrible consequences. The speaker risks becoming the target of the money’s noise machine: Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, Fox. Smears. Humiliation. Banishment. Or the noise machine cranks up a campaign of misinformation, convincing people –especially DC people — that what they see in front of their eyes just isn’t so. Repeat it enough and it becomes solid knowledge.
We all know this is the way it is. So don’t tell me that “we don’t have the money” to keep 300,000 teachers from being laid off, or to help the long-term, mostly older unemployed workers get something to live on and keep their health care. The money is right there in front of us, but the Congress is bought and paid for.
What do we do? We have to demand representatives who represent us, not make excuses for representing the wealthy. The unfortunate, poor and disadvantaged must count every bit as much as the privileged — that’s what democracy means. And we have to be ready to turn them out if they don’t. For our part, we have to pay attention and demand to be shown, not told. We have to become citizens, not consumers.

Why The Deficit Dominates DC Thinking

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This post originally appeared at Campaign for America’s Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.

Washington politicians are convinced that the public is demanding cuts in spending, even over creating jobs and restoring the economy. This pressure comes because much of the public believes that “Obama tripled the deficit.” This has been the right’s drumbeat for over a year and the public has not heard any response. You can barely turn on the radio or TV, or go on the Internet, or read the letters-to-the-editor in your local paper without hearing one or another form of this message repeated.

Fact: Bush’s 2009 budget-year deficit was $1.4 trillion. 2009 was President Bush’s last budget and included the Wall Street bailouts, unemployment benefits and other costs of the incoming recession, plus Iraq and Afghanistan. This massive deficit was just one more conservative failure.

But the right’s propaganda campaign telling the public that this was Obama’s deficit, not Bush’s has gone unanswered. The Obama administration and their allies are not reaching the public with the truth or any message that counters the lies the right is putting out.

Charts that make it appear that the huge deficit was Obama’s doing are an example of how the public is being conned:

obama-deficit-slide

The well-funded Heritage Foundation is one leader of the effort to convince the public of this. Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures demonstrates an effort to mislead the public into blaming Obama for Bush’s massive deficits.

FOX News had this headline: Obama Triples Budget Deficit to $1.4 Trillion (they have since changed the headline but here is it as it appeared:)

fox nation clip

On the radio the drumbeat continues with people like Rush Limbaugh, saying, President Obama Lies About His Massive Deficits and Tax Increases,

People are fed up with this spending. They’re scared to death of it. They know full well what it portends. It portends massive tax increases for years on us, our kids and grandkids. It weakens the country. This is just an abomination. Nine years ago we were attacked. Barack Obama cannot tell the truth. Constitutionally, he’s not capable of telling the truth. He has increased the deficit, not by twice, not by three times, but by four times… Last year’s deficit surged to $1.42 trillion, more than three times the record of the previous year. An imbalance of $454.8 billion in 2008. So Bush’s last year budget deficit was $454.8 billion. Obama’s budget deficit last year was $1.42 trillion. That’s nearly $1 trillion more that he added to it in fiscal 2009.

Here is Sean Hannity claiming Obama “quadrupled the deficit”,

This is why the deficit dominates the agenda in DC. This dishonest propaganda campaign is the source of the political pressure to cut spending. Fine. What else would you expect from the right? It’s what they do. But why has this campaign gone unanswered? Why haven’t the forces allied with the President reached out with the facts? Why have they let themselves be put into this box?

A bigger question, why does the Obama administration still not seem to get it that this is what they do? The right has a coordinated, funded propaganda machine that just lies, and smears, belittles and humiliates people, makes the public afraid, stirs up division – even encourages sedition, all to get their way.

The right is well-funded because there is a monetary payoff to the big corporations and wealthy individuals who fund campaigns like this one. Their anti-government campaign is buying tax cuts, subsidies, deregulation or just non-enforcement of regulations, waivers or just lack of enforcement of anti-trust rules, military contracts, and a long list of other financial benefits.

Meanwhile people interested in democracy and good government are largely unfunded. They are largely shut out of TV and radio. For example, you rarely see a representative of labor on TV, radio or in the news. Bloggers reach a lot of people, but nothing like the talk radio/TV empire of the right. So how can we do this better?
We will be talking about this Tuesday afternoon at the Americas Future Now conference session, Can Bloggers Bring Populism To The Potomac? with Digby, Sara Robinson, Zach Carter, Terrance Heath, RJ Eskow and myself.