White House – Page 2

The debt ceiling negotiations have heated up to match the mercury outside and Republicans and Democrats are proposing dranconian cuts to Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare while preserving tax breaks for the super wealthy and corporate tax subsidies.

Join us to ask the RI delegation to stand their ground for Rhode Islanders by defending these principles:

Defending the Well Being of Our Communities – Program cuts that eliminate benefits, reduce eligibility, demand participants pay more or force state governments to make cuts are not acceptable.
Responsible Reductions in Defense Spending – National security is essential, but our defense spending wastes billions. We can responsibly reduce outlays for defense while maintaining a strong, secure nation.
Fixing the Corporate Tax System is Imperative – We cannot afford a tax code that rewards corporations for hiding money offshore and permits them to benefit from accounting gimmicks and loopholes. As good paying jobs become harder to find and corporate profits continue to skyrocket, we need to strike the right balance of corporate citizenship and economic growth.
Restoring Fairness to the Income Tax – While the income tax structure is progressive, it does not make up for the regressive nature of the many other forms of taxation in our nation – property taxes, the sales tax and so on. We allow far too many people to hide wealth, or claim income as something else that is taxed differently – or not at all. We must ask the wealthiest – from hedge fund managers to the inheritors of fortunes – to be good patriots and contribute more to the commonweal.
Responsible Social Spending Reform – The only acceptable changes to programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are those that make the programs more efficient and successful. Any changes that result in the loss of income security or access to health care are unacceptable.

Add your name to the petition today and ask our Congressional delegation to HOLD THEIR GROUND!

It is with the utmost concern that we are following the negotiations between Congress and the President over the national debt ceiling. Many of the proposals, including those from Democrats as well as from Republicans, offer devastating reductions to programs including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid that are necessary to keep scores of millions of Americans healthy, educated, financially secure and free from desperate need.

During this difficult time, many of your constituents in Rhode Island have watched, with great pride, as you have been a voice of reason, calling on Congress to approach the issue of our nation’s long-term debt with compassion, fairness and moral principle.

We write to say thank you. On behalf of the people of Rhode Island, our working families and struggling unemployed, our cities and small towns, our schools, our health centers and our senior centers, we say “Thank you.” Thank you for understanding that harming the well-being of children, seniors, the poor and the disabled is not a solution of any kind. Thank you for taking action – through letters to the President, votes on the floor, interviews in the media, and messages to your constituents – on behalf of those for whom government programs provide support and hope during these hard times. Thank you for being the truly progressive leader that Rhode Island and America need today.

Thank you for recognizing that fundamental economic principles demonstrate that cuts during periods of high unemployment are counter-productive. Thank you for demanding that the long-term deficit be addressed not only by cuts, but also through fair, common sense revenue measures. You have articulated, cogently and forcefully, for the inclusion of these measures – including ideas like closing corporate tax loopholes, eliminating tax breaks for the wealthy, repealing the Bush-era tax cuts and asking the top brackets to chip-in as good patriots should. Thank you for being a voice that demands we ask as much of the fortunate few as we do of everyone else.

We also write to ask you to stay strong. As the negotiations continue, there will be pressure from within your party, from the press, and from powerful interests in our society to do the wrong thing. Those privileged few will call on Congress to cut programs instead of cutting corporate welfare. They will ask that you vote to devastate working families instead of asking the wealthiest to contribute a little more to the common good in return for the opportunities our nation has given them. They will ask that we base decisions on a faulty concept – that government is not an answer to our society’s ills, but rather the cause.

As representatives of communities and organizations that see, every day, how programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid change people’s lives for the better, we know this view is wrong. We believe you share our belief that as a society, we have a moral duty to ensure that everyone has a chance to live a full, productive and economically secure life. That is the American Dream.

We ask that you support a resolution to this crisis based on the following principles:

Defending the Well Being of Our Communities. Program cuts that eliminate benefits, reduce eligibility, demand participants pay more or force state governments to make cuts are not acceptable.

Responsible Reductions in Defense Spending. National security is essential, but our defense spending wastes billions. We can responsibly reduce outlays for defense while maintaining a strong, secure nation.

Fixing the Corporate Tax System is Imperative. We cannot afford a tax code that rewards corporations for hiding money offshore and permits them to benefit from accounting gimmicks and loopholes. As good paying jobs become harder to find and corporate profits continue to skyrocket, we need to strike the right balance of corporate citizenship and economic growth.

Restoring Fairness to the Income Tax. While the income tax structure is progressive, it does not make up for the regressive nature of the many other forms of taxation in our nation – property taxes, the sales tax and so on. We allow far too many people to hide wealth, or claim income as something else that is taxed differently – or not at all. We must ask the wealthiest – from hedge fund managers to the inheritors of fortunes – to be good patriots and contribute more to the commonweal.

Responsible Social Spending Reform. The only acceptable changes to programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid are those that make the programs more efficient and successful. Any changes that result in the loss of income security or access to health care are unacceptable.

These are principles reflected in the Congressional Progressive Caucus’ Peoples Budget (introduced as an amendment to Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal and voted on in the House on April 14). That document can and should serve as a guide towards a responsible resolution of our national budget challenges.We respectfully request that you join the other members of the Rhode Island Congressional Delegation in transmitting to the President the sense of the people of Rhode Island as embodied in the principles above. As August 2nd approaches and America faces the real possibility of not being able to meet its debt and other payments, the people of Rhode Island need to know that any resolution will not occur at the expense of the common good.

Thank you for being the champion we need in these trying times. We support your good work and stand ready to help in any way we can.

SIGN THE PETITION HERE!

Step One: Form a “Fiscal Commission” tasked with developing a plan (with the end result of implementing the plan) to reduce the budget deficit during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. This will be done by slashing spending on social services, MediCare, Social Security, education, etc. (all the things that working folks depend on), but not the military budget, bailouts for banks, corporate subsidies to businesses sending jobs overseas, etc. Check!

Step Two: Ignore the growth of income inequality in the U.S. over the past 30+ years, which is actually at the root of the economic problems the country faces. Don’t even mention it, and especially don’t do anything about it. Check!

I have watched in shocked horror over the past couple weeks, as conservative deficit hawks enabled by the Democratic Party, have marched toward a fiscal austerity program that will take the depressed and down economy and pummel it to a bloody pulp. This is all being done in order to alleviate some mythical inflationary pressure that wealthy bankers are terrified of (remember, inflation is the biggest enemy of accumulated wealth).

Of course none of this really matters to the tens of millions of people who are looking for work, have had their hours cuts, have been forced into part-time work, or are in fear of losing their jobs (55% of all adults in the labor force have been affected by this recession in some way).

The real problem is that people aren’t spending money because of the recession, and that is directly related to the growth in income inequality, albeit in complicated ways. Since the 1970s, U.S. wages have largely remained stagnant. At the same time, the vast majority of all the wealth created in the country over the last 30 years has been flowing upward.

Because the super wealthy don’t actually work to generate their income, wages as a share of national income has been declining for just as long. What that means is less and less money is being earned by workers, and that’s bad for the economy because workers spending money is what fuels economic growth. Consumers earning more money means that they can buy more goods and services, increasing the effective demand in an economy. Seems pretty simple, right? Well, yes, it is.

But Brian, if wages have been stagnant for 30 years, then why has the economy been growing that whole time? I’m glad you asked. The economy didn’t tank sooner because people have been supplementing their stagnant or declining wage income with credit and debt. As a society, America took out more and more, and larger and larger, loans either through credit cards, home equity loans, mortgages, payday loans, and all the other delightful financial products offered by financial institutions intent on making money off of your debt. Notably, as fake housing wealth grew, people used their homes as ATMs – we’re currently seeing how good of an idea that was (and once the housing bubble burst, the $1 trillion of increased demand that was based on it vanished).

As a result of all this borrowing, middle class Americans tripled their debt over the last 30 years. As we all know, when debt rises, service on the debt rises. That is yet another mechanism that sucks dollars from a local economy and puts it in the bank account of CEOs, exacerbating the income inequality problem (always remember that when millions of people have been losing their jobs since 2007, Wall Street managed to find $145 billion to pay in bonuses in 2009 alone).

Yes, there’s more to the story, there always is. But here we are, discussing the budget deficit and the national debt when the real problem is that average workers are getting screwed, they haven’t been making enough money to keep pace with the increases in the cost of living, virtually all the wealth accumulates into the hands of the few, and Democrats and Republicans continue to let it happen.

We need to put more money in the hands of people who will spend it in the economy – that’s the only way jobs will come back. Why the federal government isn’t spending every waking moment developing a strategy for making this happen is beyond me. Instead we get bank bailouts and financial reform legislation that makes Wall Street happy.

We expect Republicans to screw workers – that’s what they do. But Democrats have, time and again, been complicit in the weakening of the middle class. And it’s no different now.

Category: White House

Stand Strong for Rhode Islanders in the Debt Ceiling Fight!