http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/279-82/5972-the-peoples-budget
The People's Budget
The battle is squared, and why we need budget jujitsu.
echnically, the federal government has now reached the limit of its capacity to borrow money.
Raising the debt ceiling used to be a technical adjustment, made almost automatically. Now it's a political football.
Democrats should never have agreed to link it to an agreement on the long-term budget deficit.
But now that the debt ceiling is in play, there's no end to what the radical right will demand. John Boehner is already using the classic "they're making me" move, seemingly helpless in the face of Tea Party storm troopers who refuse to raise the ceiling unless they get their way. Their way is reactionary and regressive - eviscerating Medicare, cutting Medicaid and programs for the poor, slashing education and infrastructure, and using most of the savings to reduce taxes on the rich.
If the only issue were cutting the federal deficit by four or five trillion dollars over the next ten years, the President and Democrats wouldn't have to cave in to this extortion. That goal can be achieved by doing exactly the opposite of what radical Republicans are demanding. We can reduce the long-term budget deficit, keep everything Americans truly depend on, and also increase spending on education and infrastructure - by cutting unnecessary military expenditures, ending corporate welfare, and raising taxes on the rich.
I commend to you the "People's Budget," a detailed plan for doing exactly this - while reducing the long-term budget deficit more than either the Republican's or the President's plan does. When I read through the People's Budget my first thought was how modest and reasonable it is. It was produced by the House Progressive Caucus but could easily have been generated by
But of course the coming battle isn't really over whether to cut the long-term deficit by trillions of dollars. It's over whether to shrink the government we depend on and to use the savings to give corporations and the super-rich even more tax benefits they don't need or deserve.
The main reason the "center" has moved so far to the right - and continues to move rightward - is radical conservatives have repeatedly grabbed the agenda and threatened havoc if they don't get their way. They're doing it again.
Will the President and congressional Democrats cave in to their extortion? When even Nancy Pelosi says "everything is on the table" you've got to worry.
We can fortify the President and congressional Democrats and prevent them from moving further right by doing exactly what the Tea Partiers are doing - but in reverse.
Call it budget Jujitsu.
The message from the "People's Party" should be unconditional: No cuts in Medicare and Medicaid or Social Security: More spending on education and infrastructure. Pay for it and reduce the long-term budget deficit by cutting military spending and raising taxes on the rich. The People's Budget is the template.
But what if the President and Dems show signs of caving? This is the heart of the progressive dilemma. Are we prepared to say no to raising the debt ceiling if our demands aren't met? That way, the responsibility for rounding up the necessary Republican votes shifts to Wall Street and big business - arguably more eager to raise the debt ceiling and avoid turmoil in credit markets than anyone else. They're also better able to push the GOP - whom they fund.
Which leads to a more basic question: Are we ready and willing to mount primary challenges to incumbent Democrats who cave?
Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the
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From: David McReynolds [mailto:
Sent: Monday, May 16, 2011 8:55 PM
Subject: The Freedom Rides
I'm sending this to the EdgeLeft list because I suspect the great two hour PBS show will repeat. Some of you, I know, will
have gotten this note from being on another of my lists. If you did see the show, I think you will, as did I, feel lucky to have
had a chance to watch it.
David
I'm watching the end of the two hour special on the Freedom Rides. I hope someone in
get this to Brahm Bassford, who was one of those who spent a term in Parchman prison in
I wasn't there - I knew I should have gone, that it was the right time, the right tactic, but I was too afraid
and wrote about this long ago in Liberation magazine. Brahm, a member of the Socialist Party, went.
I am sure there were also Communists on those rides, and political moderates who believed deeply
in civil rights.
The Freedom Riders didn't have support from the White House or the Democratic Party (in fact, the
Democratic Party was, in the South, the real problem).
There was a dialectic between the nonviolence of the Freedom Riders, and the fact that eventually
the Federal government had to intervene and provide some protection - the eyes of the world were
on the South. I know that there is always a dialectic in our lives - that the nonviolence of the Civil
Rights movement made it impossible for the Federal government to avoid the reality and forced
it to send in the marshals.
And I know that when the late Lorraine Hansberry and James Baldwin arranged for a meeting
in
confrontation helped change Bobby Kennedy.
Not covered in this two hour show was the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation, in which the late Igal Roodenko, the late Bayard Rustin, the late Jim Peck, and the very much alive George Houser, and several others whose names I can't recall (most of them members of the Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters League), first challenged Jim Crow - these men ended up on chain gangs, but they showed the way of nonviolence and its power.
Bayard Rustin once told me that we all are broken and can be stronger for it. My failure to go on the
Freedom Rides "broke me", but it didn't knock me out of the movement - which must always have
room in it for cowards. Our movement cannot just be for heroes.
What courage these young people had back in the early 1960's. In looking back, can we also look
ahead, from
take on the system of bankers and militarists - and know, in taking them on, that there are within the
ranks "of the enemy" many who know we are right and wish us well in the struggle.
As the show closed a moment ago I remain stunned at the "impossible courage" of those who,
nearly a half century ago, changed
David McReynolds
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