In the next week or so, the so-called Super Congress will be announcing it’s plan for saving another three trillion or so dollars. You can be pretty sure the plan won’t include any new taxes on the rich. If there are any new taxes, they’ll be imposed on the rest of us, the ones already in trouble and footing the bill for the financial industries irresponsible behavior. Those cuts will be deep, and will undoubtedly cause the layoff of hundreds of thousands of public sector workers. That will further reduce the tax base and strain the social safety net, which is exactly what the Republican Party seems to be trying to do. They appear believe that they can hold jobs hostage by refusing to do their jobs and by cutting budgets, in the name of deficit reduction, in order to create even more pain in this country. They believe that this will win them the Presidency in 2012 and majorities in both houses.
I believe that the coming cuts will do nearly irreparable harm to this country. It’s another giant step towards dismantling the social safety net that has served to protect those who are displaced by economic changes, unable to work because of illness, or temporarily out of work for other reasons. That net is more important than ever after the financial industry crashed the market, which caused millions of Americans to lose their life savings. The ripples from that disaster are still causing problems all around the world.
While the debt is an important issue, it’s not nearly so important as jobs. Without jobs, there is little or no chance that we’ll be able to grow our way out of this current stagnation.
What we really need are real reforms on the banking industry, a retirement of the Bush tax cuts, and some serious oversight over military and intelligence spending. We need to fund the Infrastructure Bank which would create jobs all over the country updating our dilapidated infrastructure. We need to break up the big banks, so we are no longer put in the position of having to bail one out because it’ failure would be too damaging to the country. We need to break up the telecommunication near-monopolies that have stifled competition, resulting in the U.S. having one of the slowest Internets in the industrialized world.
But the first step is stopping our current death march to oblivion. We need jobs, not budget cuts. Let’s put America back to work, then we can do the responsible thing and pay down the deficit. Providing we can put and keep the “Spend On Credit” Republicans out of power.
