Robbing Workers ...

Nov 22, 2010

Working for months in secret, waiting until the election was over, the “Deficit-Cutting Commission” quietly presented its preliminary recommendations.

The two co-chairs of the Commission–one Republican, one Democrat–said it’s necessary to cut the U.S. budget deficit. They say it’s intolerable.

Agreed. But what caused the deficit? Why not cut the enormous expenditures that created it?

Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy contributed four trillion dollars to the budget deficit. Cut them, you get four trillion dollars over ten years–which is exactly the amount the commission says it would cut.

The Bush/Obama wars, justified by lies, added another three trillion dollars–one trillion directly, two indirectly.

The Bush/Obama bailout to the banks cost more than four trillion dollars. No one knows how much more. No real audit has ever been made public.

AND the bank bailout goes on. The Federal Reserve started to give the banks almost another trillion dollars two weeks ago.

It’s obvious what drains the budget–obvious what should be cut.

Instead, the Commission is floating a complicated plan to take money from working people:

• Social Security benefits for current retirees will be cut by “revising”–once again–the Consumer Price Index (CPI) which determines COLA adjustments.

• Veterans’ pensions will be cut by the same tricky revision of the CPI.

• Current workers–government and private–whose wages depend on COLA will also face cuts because of the fakery with the CPI.

• Medicare is to be cut, making current retirees pay more in premiums and co-pays, while reducing coverage for some services.

• Medicaid coverage for long-term care in a nursing home is severely cut back.

• Regular Medicaid is cut by requiring a bigger co-pay on services.

• Coming generations will have to work longer before they could draw Social Security.

• Veterans will have to wait longer before they collect their pensions.

• Government workers will have their pay frozen for three years. Not just fat cat politicians and presidential advisers, but clerks, park workers, maintenance workers, and so on–plus soldiers.

• These same workers will have to pay half the money going toward their pensions.

• Soldiers’ and veterans’ health care will be cut.

• The number of government jobs will be cut by 10%–not the top jobs, but the ordinary workers, affecting not only those workers, but reducing the services they provide and we need–roads and bridges, unemployment benefits, public transport, inspection of workplace safety, food safety, drug safety, environmental safety, etc.

Using the pretext of the government’s budget deficit, these hyenas are proposing cuts so massive that the standard of living of the whole working class and other layers of the population will plummet.