ShareThis
Sept 3, 2010
People have to be very careful how they cast their votes this November. The political atmosphere is such that misinformation and irresponsible rhetoric are so pervasive there is hardly any room for any intelligent and meaningful discussion of the real issues affecting American lives not just today but even in the distant future.
If gallup polls won’t change and the airwaves continue to sound off the demise of a Democratic Congress, brace yourself up for the worst times and the darkest history in U.S. politics. Obstruction politics which was the dominant force in the Lower House and especially in the Senate will only give way to unobstructed politics for the wealthy and the greedy. Anything Wall Street likes it gets. Banks, Big Oil companies, Insurance giants and pharmaceutical corporations will get their way at the expense of the working class and country’s poor.
Remember the SCOTUS ruling on Citizens United Vs FEC? If you think these big corporations have been sleeping on that opportunity to influence the result of the midterm elections, you ought to wake up right now. They have put their money and strategies in motion long before the wheels of President Obama’s health care reform started rolling.
Take a good look at the Republican agenda: Privatizing Social Security, removing, Medicare, extending the Bush tax cut for the wealthy 2% for another 10 years or perhaps making it permanent, ending public education, repealing health care reform legislation, shutting down the government and impeaching President Obama. Privatizing Social Security even after the collapse of Wall Street, thanks to the government bailout that put it back on its feet, makes no sense for the working class.
Why put a government program that has worked for 75 years for American senior citizens unnecessarily at risk and in the hands of private corporations that care only about profit? Social Security is not in peril. It has $2.5 trillion surplus now and will pay 100 percent of benefits without any problem until 2037. And though those in the privatization bandwagon claim that it will go insolvent in 27 years, this claim is not true. Social Security can still pay 78% of its benefits after 27 years, a small problem blown out of proportion by those who want take the program out of the hands of the government.
The National Deficit Commission, a bipartisan agency created in February by President Obama’s Executive Order, is gearing for cuts and raising the retirement age. Both plans are inimical to seniors, the sector for which this program was created. Privatizing Social Security is detrimental to the seniors who could lose their retirement benefits at a time they need it most. This is the reason, under a Democratic Congress the Bush’s privatization of Social Security never happened. The Democrats refused to legislate a law that they deemed detrimental to America’s working class. If you think Social Security is bad for you, then go ahead and vote Republicans to Congress.
And Medicare, the government health plan that takes care of seniors and disabled Americans when private insurance would rather not, is a program that must be protected and preserved from politicians who think of it as an entitlement the poor and middle class Americans do not deserve. Less government, small government or shutting down government is the Republican way of taking care of its people but only the extremely wealthy, whose entitlements come not in food stamps or government assisted housing programs but in billions of saved tax cuts that make our budget deficit soar.
When President Reagan took office in 1981, the national debt was at $995 billion. He cut the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest of Americans from 70% to 38% promising that in so doing, it would stimulate investment and shoot up the economy to the highest levels of production and prosperity. Lo and behold, the supply side of economics did just exactly the opposite. “It produced the deepest recession since the Great Depression.”
Twelve years later, at the end of George H. W. Bush’s presidency, the $995 billion deficit ballooned to $4 trillion. Bill Clinton took the opposite of Reagan’s course. He raised taxes on the wealthy and lowered them for the working and middle classes. Together with his other programs, the country saw a flourishing economy, the longest economic expansion in U.S. history. Not surprisingly, he turned the budget deficit to a budget surplus of $127 billion in 2000. And then came along George W. Bush. He returned to the Reagan economic policy, showering approximately $630 billion in tax cuts to the top 1% Americans. Bush blew Clinton’s surplus on his first year. In 2004, the deficit was placed at $415 billion.
In truth, it was $565 billion because Bush transferred $150 billion from the Social Security trust fund.
Barack Obama came along. Amidst soaring deficits he had to contend with on his first year, he immediately worked on the centerpiece of his campaign, the health care reform. A major legislation that has been stalled for decades, finally passed and was signed into law but is now being threatened repeal by the Republicans who insists on painting the historic legislation as bad.
Obama invested $50 billion, acquiring 61 percent ownership in General Motors when it was on the verge of collapse. The folding of this auto company would have cost hundreds of thousands of jobs but thanks to his smart move, GM made 2 billion in profits so far this year and is poised to sell stock on Wall Street and is ready to start repaying the government.
After the Gulf oil spill, Obama negotiated a $20 billion guarantee from BP for the residents of the Gulf Coast whose livelihoods were heavily affected by this environmental disaster. Meanwhile, the Republicans want you to vote for them so they can legislate the laws for the wealthy and the corporations they are beholden to. So go ahead, vote Republican and watch your children go to war after war after war. Vote Republican and watch the demise of Social Security and Medicare and other government programs Republicans call entitlements. Vote Republican and you’ll live to regret it for your children’s sake.