Last week the Republicans walked out of the congressional deliberations regarding the debt ceiling. They continue to hold the nation’s economic survival hostage to their obsession for ever more benefits for the wealthy and cuts for the needy – the Republican Model of Shared Sacrifice. As usual, the press fails to put into context the core differences between the Democrats and Republicans. However, those differences are pretty easy to figure out and they have been itemized by economists at the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities.
“House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan would get nearly two-thirds of its $4.5 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from programs that serve people of limited means.“
If an alien exploring the Earth were to draw conclusions about what the most pressing problems are for its inhabitants based on the Ryan budget, it would probably look something like this:
What it boils down to is that Republicans think that the current deficit problems should be resolved by cutting services to seniors, poor children, the disabled, and other low-income Americans. These freeloaders should bear the the burden of restoring our economy’s health, while the wealthy get more tax relief so that they can buy bigger boats and save for their luxury retirement.
Why anyone would think that working Americans and their families should suffer in order to repair problems caused by corporations and Wall Street bankers is unfathomable. But that’s what the GOP is proposing and they’re willing to send the nation into a disastrous default if they don’t get their way.
Also, the GOP’s arguments regarding safety nets boil down to ‘These people use these programs because they are lazy.’ Which in turn boils down to, ‘These people use these programs as an excuse to stay poor.’ Sure they do, I mean just barely surviving is great fun!! ‘I love that food stamps and welfare make it much easier to help keep myself in squalor!!’ Maybe if higher education was seen as a right and not just a SUPER expensive privilege then we would have better chances at global competition and closing the income class gap. Maybe if widening the gap wasn’t the goal of the GOP and corporate supernauts and OBSCENELY wealthy right wing activists, then the 98% of this country’s population would have already recovered from the colossal fuck ups of the previously mentioned. It can be hard to pick yourself from your own bootstraps when the bankers and fatcats took them from you, and more importantly, don’t want you to.
I’ll let Walter E. Williams and Bill Whittle do the talking on this one.
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So I gather that your point is: We should not tax the rich because they don’t have enough money. Instead, we should get the money from the poor and middle class and cut benefits to seniors and children. Because they have all the money.
That makes perfect sense. You wouldn’t want to inconvenience wealthy people or ask them to share in the sacrifice to make our country whole economically.
FYI: The richest 400 Americans have more wealth than the poorest 150,000,000 Americans.
Nothing “unfathomable” about it – once you realize that nominally “Christian” conservatives have been worshipping Mammon for decades, it’s pretty understandable…
Do you know what Christian Dominionism is? It basically says that god loves the rich(that’s why they are rich) and hates the poor. And these people are the ones that make up the republican religious right.
The Family, anyone?