{"id":1028,"date":"2013-02-22T12:32:10","date_gmt":"2013-02-22T18:32:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1028"},"modified":"2013-02-25T12:36:53","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T18:36:53","slug":"sequestration-sacrifices-jobs-to-save-billionaire-tax-breaks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/sequestration-sacrifices-jobs-to-save-billionaire-tax-breaks\/","title":{"rendered":"Sequestration Sacrifices Jobs to Save Billionaire Tax Breaks"},"content":{"rendered":"

by John Nichols<\/a>, The Nation
\nClick here to read original article<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a great deal of talk about how Republican senators have gone\u00a0off the rails<\/a>\u00a0in their opposition to the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel to serve as Secretary of Defense. And there have been some bizarre deviations, with senators making pronouncements based on internet rumors and unfounded speculation.<\/p>\n

But none of the fantastical filibustering of the Hagel fight can compare with the delusional dialogue regarding the federal budget.<\/p>\n

To hear the billionaire proponents of austerity tell it, America is teetering on the brink of economic ruin. America, we are told, is broke. And the only answer is to \u201cFix the Debt\u201d with deep spending cuts followed by the radical reordering of Social Security,\u00a0<\/a>Medicare and Medicaid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But America is not broke.<\/p>\n

America has broken priorities.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what the billionaire proponents of cuts-at-any-cost economics won\u2019t acknowledge as they advance\u00a0a \u201cFix the Debt\u201d agenda<\/a>\u00a0that imposes austerity on everyone else, while stacking the deck in their favor.<\/p>\n

It is vital to understand that there is an economically and socially viable alternative to austerity cuts. It\u2019s a growth agenda that addresses waste, fraud and abuse while finding new revenues to invest in job creation, education and expansion of access to healthcare.<\/p>\n

The growth agenda, as proposed in\u00a0the \u201cBalancing Act\u201d<\/a>\u00a0advanced by leaders of\u00a0the Congressional Progressive Caucus<\/a>, asks billionaires to pay their fair share in order to expand employment and opportunities.<\/p>\n

The austerity agenda\u00a0asks everyone but the billionaires to pay<\/a>: via cuts not just to benefits and services but to jobs.<\/p>\n

The anticipated March 1 sequestration, which proposes across-the-board cuts, is an example of austerity.<\/p>\n

It continues a two-year-long process of slashing federal programs that are of value to Americans.<\/p>\n

But it demands nothing new of billionaires and corporations that are on the winning end of rapidly expanding income inequality.<\/p>\n

If we have learned anything from cuts in Europe it is that with austerity comes unemployment.<\/p>\n

Even Barack Obama\u2019s critics tend to shy away from arguing against the reality that the president was right when\u00a0he said<\/a>: \u201cThese cuts are not smart, they are not fair, they will add hundreds of thousands of people to the unemployment rolls. This is not an abstraction. People will lose their jobs. The unemployment rate might tick up again.\u201d<\/p>\n

The only place for quibbling is with the word \u201cmight.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austerity, in the form of the sequestration of federal spending that is set to begin March 1, will result in job losses.<\/p>\n

Austerity in the the form of a renewed push by Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles and\u00a0the billionaire-backed \u201cFix the Debt\u201d campaign<\/a>\u00a0to assault Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, has the potential to lead to even more significant job losses.<\/p>\n

How many jobs? The most hopeful estimates begin in the range of the 700,000 losses predicted by the Macroeconomic Advisers<\/a>\u00a0research group. But they could go much higher, according to an October report to Congress by the\u00a0Congressional Research Service.<\/a><\/p>\n

But the sequestration is not the worst of it.<\/p>\n

The sequestration is the start, not the finish, of a process that undoes economic recovery and causes job losses to spike by even greater numbers.<\/p>\n

Simpson and Bowles are back, promoting schemes such as \u201cchained CPI,\u201d the slashing of cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients that will squeeze the buying power of seniors and people with disabilities and further impede economic growth.<\/p>\n

That will cost even more jobs. And why?<\/p>\n

In the case of the sequestration fight, to preserve tax loopholes that benefit millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations that shift jobs overseas.<\/p>\n

In the case of Simpson-Bowles, to lower top marginal tax rates that benefit millionaires and billionaires and multinational corporations that shift jobs overseas.<\/p>\n

This is what austerity is all about: exploiting fiscal challenges in order to redistribute the wealth upward.<\/p>\n

Louis Brandeis<\/a>\u00a0argued in another era of wrangling over economic and fiscal policy: \u201cWe must make our choice. We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can\u2019t have both.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today we may say, extending upon the wisdom of Justice Brandeis, that \u201cwe must make our choice. We may have a measure of economic democracy and with it job growth, or we may have austerity with the purpose of further concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but we can\u2019t have both.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by John Nichols, The Nation Click here to read original article There is a great deal of talk about how Republican senators have gone\u00a0off the rails\u00a0in their opposition to the nomination of former Senator Chuck Hagel to serve as Secretary of Defense. And there have been some bizarre deviations, with senators making pronouncements based on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1029,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/pete_peterson_rtr_img.jpg?fit=615%2C410&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1030,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1028\/revisions\/1030"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}