Fw: 10 Ways Right-Wingers Will Try to Wreck Any Economic Recovery

This is certainly a "Lose, Lose" list for We, the People, and a "Win, Win" list for the Honest too Goodness Corporate Americans. 

Remember, the guy in control always writes the contract to meet his needs.  We might force some modest changes in this list, but we're far better off writing our own and building the muscle to force it down their greedy throats. 

 

Curious Carl

10 Ways Right-Wingers Will Try to Wreck Any Economic Recovery
By Isaiah J. Poole, Blog for Our Future
Posted on December 27, 2010, Printed on January 2, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149333/

Conservatives have a legislative agenda for 2011 that will hurt your ability
to get or keep a job, your neighborhood's ability to recover from the
recession and this country's ability to regain its footing in the global
economy.

To keep conservatives from enacting policies that will kill a nascent
economic recovery, progressives will have to organize against these top 10
economy killers.

1. Repeal of Health-Care Reform


Republicans have placed "repealing Obamacare" at the top of their
legislative agenda for 2011. If they succeed, the economy is going to come
down with multiple serious illnesses-at least 24, according to a report
released this month by Rep. Peter Stark of the House Ways and Means
Committee.

Among them: a $143 billion increase in the deficit by losing the savings the
reforms created, an increase the number of uninsured by 30 million people,
an end to free preventative care services and the loss of the requirement
that insurance companies devote the bulk of premium payments to health care
costs rather than expensive advertising and executive perks. While a
Virginia judge is a conservative hero for blocking health-care reform's
requirement that people buy private insurance, conservatives are silent on
the fact that if that requirement goes, the reform's mandate that insurance
companies cover preexisting conditions is unsustainable.

We'll be back to uncontrolled cost increases in private insurance. But, as
the state of our health compared to other leading nations continues to
decline, conservatives will at least be able to say that they maintained the
United States' global leadership as the nation that spends the most on
health care and gets the least.

2. Diminish the Federal Government's Ability to Support Job-Creation


Conservatives are poised to execute a strikingly broad assault against
federal spending, particularly programs that help jump-start and steer the
nation's job-creation engine. It includes the expected targets-such proven
programs as Community Development Block Grants-as well as some new ones,
such as the Small Business Administration (there goes all that Republican
fealty to "small business") and even the requirement that the Federal
Reserve take employment impact into account when it sets monetary policy.

That latest addition to the target list goes after the Humphrey-Hawkins full
employment law, named after Rep. Augustus Hawkins, an early leader of the
Congressional Black Caucus in the 1970s, and Sen. Hubert Humphrey. The law
was passed in reaction to the Nixon-Ford inflation-fighting era, when the
Fed ratcheted up interest rates to cool the economy, without regard to
unemployment rates that were then approaching the scandalous levels of 9
percent. The right never liked this bill, but now with the election of
people such as Rand Paul in the Senate and cheerleading from The Wall Street
Journal editorial page, repeal has moved from right-wing think-tank wish
lists to serious legislative agenda item.

Since the right can't complain about inflation-there is none-the enemy is
"quantitative easing," the Fed's bid to pour liquidity into the economy in
hopes that fuels investment and jobs. Take away quantitative easing and
there's literally nothing left in the economic policy playbook to keep the
economy from slipping back into recession.

3. Slash Federal Infrastructure Spending

The departing chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure
Committee, Rep. James Oberstar, offered some rare frank talk earlier this
year when he said the country's transportation network "was once the envy of
the world" but has now "slipped into decline." And it's not just
transportation: The systems that deliver clean water to our taps were given
a grade of "D-" in 2009 by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Engaging in a catch-up campaign to restore our infrastructure should be a
no-brainer, because of many hundreds of thousands of jobs created by the
restoration work as well as the long-term impact on economic growth. But
instead, while countries such as China race ahead on infrastructure
investment, conservative governors are being heralded as heroes for
rejecting high-speed rail money and killing a rail tunnel on the nation's
busiest rail corridor leading into New York City. Conservative ideologues
are once again proposing to end most federal transportation spending. And
even those on the right willing to maintain some federal transportation
spending won't consider such simple common-sense moves as an increase in the
gasoline tax, which has not increased since 1993.

Other major industrial powers put a premium on moving people and goods
through their countries efficiently. Under conservative dominance, the
United States increasingly doesn't. Guess how the U.S. will fare in global
economic competition if this keeps up.

4. Dismantle Medicare (and Give Seniors "Vouchers")

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., who is successfully positioning himself as a thought
leader among conservatives, is pushing a plan that would end the Medicare
program for seniors and replace it with vouchers that seniors would use
toward the cost of private insurance. We don't have to speculate about how
well this would work: Just look at Medicare Advantage, says Austin Frakt,
assistant professor of health policy at Boston University's School of Public
Health, in an article for Kaiser Health News. "The private Medicare
Advantage plans are a (voluntary) voucher system. When covering a
beneficiary, an Advantage plan receives a fixed monthly payment from
Medicare that depends on the beneficiary's county of residence and health
status. That fixed monthly payment is tantamount to a voucher."

And as Frakt and the Obama administration point out, Medicare Advantage
costs more than regular Medicare services. Ryan's voucherization of
Medicare, however, would control costs not by restraining insurance
companies or health-care corporations but by keeping the value of the
voucher below the increase in health care costs, thus shifting increasing
out-of-pocket costs onto seniors themselves. Conservatives say this means
government won't be rationing care to seniors. With vouchers, seniors will
forced to ration care on their own.

5. Undo Financial Reform, and Let the Predators Run

Rep. Spencer Baucus, the Republican who will take over the House Financial
Services Committee, has said that the primary function of government
financial regulation is not to protect the consumer but to "serve the
banks." On that score, conservatives are already off to a good start.

First, Republicans killed the omnibus spending bill that would have funded
the operations of government for the next year. Now they've made it clear
that they won't approve any bill that provides funding for the financial
reforms in this year's bill.

What will happen if they get their way? The agency that will make sure
credit ratings aren't rigged by the banks, the way they were in the run-up
to the economic collapse: Gone. The budgets that will allow the Securities
and Exchange Commission and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission
monitor reckless and/or illegal bank activity: Gone. Even the office that
would protect investors - that is, people who buy stocks - would be
eliminated. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and ts aggressive
chief, Elizabeth Warren, is the next target in their sights.

That's the formula: put fewer cops on the beat, make sure the cops are
docile, and harass the ones who aren't. Cut the garlic budget just as the
vampires prepare for their midnight run. That makes it safe for the Wall
Street casino to reopen as if nothing ever happened-and put us at greater
risk for another financial collapse.

6. Support Big Oil and Kill Green Jobs

Shortly after Congress adjourned The White House moved forward with plans to
have the Environmental Protection Agency enforce tougher limits on
greenhouse gases from power plants. The right has mounted a full-court
assault against this since President Obama took office, and Texas Gov. Rick
Perry, whose state's utilities are responsible for 11 percent of the
nation's greenhouse gas emissions, according to the Energy Information
Administration, has been leading an all-out legal war with the EPA.
(Contrast that to California, which this month launched its own version of a
cap-and-trade program.)

The right's mantra is that the EPA regulations will increase utility bills
and kill jobs. The truth is that the regulations will create new jobs in
clean-energy industries and, most importantly, save the planet. Just as Rep.
Spencer Bachus thinks government should "serve the banks," conservatives
would seem to be fine with EPA serving the polluters.

7. Don't Just Cut Government Waste; Cripple Government

From the beginning of the Reagan Revolution the plan was to create deficits
to cripple government, not to cut "waste." Reagan said the idea was to "cut
the government's allowance." George W. Bush said turning Clinton's surpluses
into huge deficits was "incredibly positive news" because it would put
government in "a fiscal straitjacket."

Now, House Republicans want to cut government spending to 2008 level. They'd
exclude defense and homeland security spending, so what that really means is
a 20 percent cut in everything else, according to the Center for Budget and
Policy Priorities. That would lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of
jobs, with recession-worsening effects in every state. And how is government
supposed to make a program work such as the stepped-up food safety
enforcement approved this month by Congress if it can't hire more staff?

One of the right's proposed tools is the creation of an "anti-appropriations
committee" that would, according to the conservative Americans for Tax
Reform, "focus only on reducing spending and balance the spending interests
of the other panels tasked with appropriating and authorizing new outlays."
It's unnecessary; appropriations committees operate under spending ceilings,
and these committees are intimately familiar with the programs they are
funding. But having a committee of rock throwers at a construction site
makes for entertaining, as well as destructive, theater.

8. Amp up the Insecurity in Social Security

Conservatives have wanted to kill the New Deal for a long time. Now they
have a historic window of opportunity. Unless the President and other
Democrats stand up for Social Security, it's going to be needlessly gutted
in the name of "deficit reduction"-even though it doesn't contribute to the
deficit. Why? They want Social Security's $2.6 trillion trust fund, so they
can use it to pay for two wars and tax breaks for the rich. They've managed
to capture most of the media with phony scare tactics about Social Security
and insolvency. They've roped in quite a few Democrats, too.

Next up: Once the program is gutted, they'll pretend to "make up the
difference" by bringing back George W. Bush's failed "privatization" scheme.
The end result will be cutbacks in benefits for the lower- and middle-income
elderly, tax breaks for the rich, and more customers for the Wall Street
gambling casino.

9. Starve Public Education

Here is an easy way to keep the rich rich and the less well-off part of the
permanent underclass: continue the decades-long conservative-led assault on
public education. In just the past month, one report says U.S. children lag
behind those in China, Finland, South Korea, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and
New Zealand in educational achievement, and another says one in four youths
fail the Army entrance exam.

Our inability to provide a quality education to all of our children is a
risk to our national security as well as our economic well-being and
competitiveness. Yet many conservatives in Congress want to respond to this
national crisis by abolishing the national agency charged with addressing
the problem, the Department of Education. That's on top of the continuing
push for school privatization and private-school vouchers, the scapegoating
of teachers and their unions, and the shifting of funding burdens to states
that simply can't handle the load.

10. Don't Ask the Rich to Help Reduce the Deficit; Ask Low-Income Americans
Instead

Cutting taxes on the rich and increasing military spending caused the
deficit. But the solutions offered by the conservative elites all center
around cutting the things government does for the people.

Without so much as a blink, conservatives succeeded in forcing an extension
of tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans that would add $36
billion to the deficit in 2011 alone.

Next, Republicans want to make their "cutgo" scheme the law of Congress, in
which new spending authorized by Congress must be offset by cuts elsewhere
but cannot be offset by tax increases or fees on anyone. But new tax cuts
would not have to be offset by spending reductions. That should finish off
any molecule of credibility they had left on their feigned concern about the
deficit.

If the wealthy aren't being asked to sacrifice something, guess who is.
Social Security is the lifeline for America's elderly, but even though it
adds nothing to the deficit it is at the forefront of proposals for cutting
it. Medical programs for the poor, the Making Work Pay program, and so many
other things the government does for our people are the first things
suggested by the well-to-do who dominate the inside-the-Beltway commissions
and commentariat.


Isaiah J. Poole is the executive editor of TomPaine.com.

C 2011 Blog for Our Future All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149333/

[w1]

Regards,
Claude Everett
Everyone has a disability, some are more aware of it than others.

_________