Dumb and Dumbest

The Republicans' fight to finish destroying this nation's social safety net in a fruitless effort to balance the budget and reduce our burgeoning deficit on the backs of the poor and middle class, is the most certain form of political suicide we have seen in this country since the New England Federalists opposed the War of 1812.



Speaker of the House John Boehner should know better. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell does know better. But House Majority Leader Eric Cantor seems hell-bent on committing the political equivalent of hara-kiri, but only after he watches the rest of his party throw itself off a cliff.



Does Mr. Cantor actually believe that the majority of the American people want him to balance the budget by destroying Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, while not raising the taxes of the richest five percent of the population.



Congressman Cantor, where do you think you live: Mexico?



First of all, we have not in the last sixty-three years (since we started keeping unemployment records in 1948) balanced a fiscal year (July-June) budget with an unemployment rate over 5.0 percent. We aren't going to balance it now with an unemployment rate almost twice that. If we can get the U.S. unemployment rate under 6.0 percent, and then we can start talking about reducing the budget deficit.



Second, the economic model that you are trying to follow-supply-side, monetarist economics-does not work. It never has, it never will. If it did, the last ten years of reduced taxes for the wealthiest Americans should have this nation in an unprecedented era of prosperity. The problem is, if you reduce taxes too much, the rich tend too flitter it away, just like anybody else. Wealth does not give one superior virtue despite what the rich seem to think. On the contrary, it seems to make things worse simply because you have so much more to waste. Comedian Robin Williams once stated that cocaine was nature's way of telling you that you are making too much money. So are high-risk stock market or other investments that lead to economic bubbles that rip the rest of the economy apart when they burst.



Third, much of our budget shortfall can be laid at the doorstep of the worst economic slump since Herbert Hoover. He and his Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, attempted to use monetarist economic plans such as you suggest, to pull us out of the Great Depression. They did not work then, they will not work now. Anyone who has ever read ancient history (Tacitus's Annals on the reign of Tiberius to be precise) knows that the only way to pull a nation out of an economic downturn as severe as the one we are now experiencing, is to use government programs to "prime the pump," to provide jobs for the out of work millions so they will start spending again.



Orrin Hatch railed last week against the almost fifty percent of the U.S. population who do not pay Federal Income Tax. These unheralded fifty percent pay lots of other taxes, including the majority of the FICA tax, most state income taxes, the gasoline tax, etc. Senator Hatch is a classic elitist who, if he reads this article, will probably accuse me of "class warfare." That has always been the way of the ruling class in this country: they invariably scream "class warfare" the loudest while practicing it the most assiduously against the poor, working, and middle classes.



However, certain people, ignorant of history, try to grab onto statements like Senator Hatch's as justification for reworking-i.e., destroying-Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and every other program that aids the least fortunate among us into a useless piece of crap.



I cannot honestly believe that any human being with a conscience wants America to return to the way things were before the New Deal, as I described in my January 18, 2009 OpEdNews article "The Forty Percent Solution:"



"At the beginning of the Twentieth Century, it has been estimated that fifty-six percent of Americans "could not make ends meet," i.e., lived in poverty (Stanley Lebergott, The American Economy: Income, Wealth and Want, 1976; p. 508) . In 1928, that number had fallen to an estimated fifty percent (from the late Steve Kangas's web site Liberalism Resurgent: Myths About Welfare; Welfare increases poverty; derived from Internal Revenue Service data cited in Donald Barlett and James Steele, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes; Simon & Schuster, 1994; pp. 66-7) ."



The New Deal got that number down to 22.2% in 1961 (in spite of the intervening Great Depression), when JFK took office. LBJ's Great Society programs had reduced it to 11.1% in 1973, when the first OPEC oil embargo, and the economic aftermath of Vietnam, wrecked our economy until 1983.



As far as I'm concerned, the Big Three--Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid--are not only inviolate, but are part of the solution to our current problems. Robert Reich points out in his blog article "Mr. President: Why Medicare Isn't the Problem, It's the Solution," that "The real problem is the soaring costs of health care that lie beneath Medicare. They're costs all of us are bearing in the form of soaring premiums, co-payments, and deductibles.



Americans spend more on health care per person than any other advanced nation and get less for our money. Yearly public and private healthcare spending is $7,538 per person. That's almost two and a half times the average of other advanced nations."



Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Congressman Jim McDermott of Washington agree, and have introduced the American Health Security Act of 2011, based on the idea of providing "Medicare for Everyone," according to John Nichols' article in The Nation, "Cut Medicare? No Way! Make It "Medicare for All"!



Medicare for Everyone could save employers and the American people billions of dollars in medical costs every year, much of it in administrative costs, negotiated prescription drug prices, and ending redundant tests and procedures. Estimates say as much as $400 Billion dollars per year.



As for Social Security, its Trust Fund is, according to the most recent Trustees Report, solvent until 2037. It has been used as a quick source of cash since the Vietnam War to reduce the size of the Federal deficit. Any problems it has could be fixed by the simple expedient of removing the cap (currently at around $110,000.00) and making all non-retirement income subject to the Social Security tax. This particular solution would be hated by the top 2% of income earners, but shared sacrifice to protect the least among us seems to me so little to ask.



This would also help take care of the "Let them eat cat food" aspects of the Presidential Commission's findings. A new and more realistic method for estimating the Cost of Living Adjustments for Social Security and Veterans Administration payments, together with an adjustment to the base amounts would go even further in allowing the elderly and disabled to live in a degree of dignity many are currently lacking.



The current impasse in the discussion over raising the nation's debt limit would be funny if it weren't so dangerous for our country. That a small, uninformed minority like the Tea Party can hold the welfare of our nation hostage is beyond my understanding.



The other aspect I don't understand is why Wall Street hasn't gone to Washington D.C. and had the classic "come to Jesus" meeting with Cantor and the Tea Party stalwarts, explaining to them that this will throw not only the United States, but the whole World into an economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression?



Are they planning to do with the dollar what George Soros did with the British pound sterling twenty years ago? Will this be the excuse to declare a national economic emergency and establish a plutocratic dictatorship?



Paranoia is so much fun; it's a game you can play with everyone.



Let us hope wiser heads prevail, rather than Dumb and Dumbest.