By Steve Hynd
The largest caucus of House Republicans has just released a plan to cut $2.5 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years. It's more aspirational than inspirational - only naming actual sources for 13% of the total - but it's a clear indication of which way the GOP wants to go. Public broadcasting, rail infrastructure, federal personnel levels, climate action - all get it in the neck. The one place they won't go, of course, is defense spending - despite a bloated DoD budget now at least as large as the entire rest of the world's.
Meanwhile, Obama is trying to paper over his tax-breaks-for-fat-cats giveaway by...employing JPMorgan Chase executive William Daley as chief of staff and General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt as the head of a new buzzword panel called the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Obama isn't cutting the defense spending spree either - his plans call for a 3% increase over and above the costs of the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
And the American people? The latest New York Times/CBS News poll says they still want to have their cake and eat it too. (But if there must be spending cuts, say the people, best they be from the defense budget - the one place neither party intends cutting.)
We are so screwed.
Ian Welsh, who has been depressingly accurate on such matters in the past, writes:
Assume Obama and Dems split the difference (remember, Obama wanted a freeze already, anyway). 1.25 trillion.
The effects of that on the US economy, such as it is, will be catastrophic.
...Times are bad, they will get worse, especially as this type of austerity is happening in virtually every western country. Expect both high inflation in what you actually need (food, for example) and high unemployment (the return of stagflation), whatever the �official� rate of inflation says.
This is what Americans voted for. Republicans were very clear that this is what they wanted, and Obama spent his campaign talking about tax cuts, not spending. They�ll meet somewhere in the middle. �No, let�s amputate at the hip, not the neck.�
As usual it'll be the poorest, the folk at the bottom who do all the walking, who get amputated.
I'm surprised they didn't just "streamline" the three branches of government down into one - the Department of Defense. Unleashing massive violence on foreign populations seems to be the only legitimate role for government, if you're a Republican.
ReplyDeleteWith my bold...
ReplyDeleteHas Obama Assumed the Position of Salesman-in-Chief to China?
What do the heads of Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Motorola, General Electric, Boeing and the Carlyle Group have in common? They all attended last night�s State Dinner with President Hu Jintao. Earlier the White House announced $45 billion in new trade deals with China, including a $19 billion deal with Boeing and a package with GE expected to generate more $2 billion in U.S. exports. Some economists say the deals will hurt U.S. efforts to end the jobless Great Recession. "President Obama has assumed the position of salesman-in-chief for companies like Boeing and General Electric who are actually engaged, along with many other multinational businesses, in primarily outsourcing American jobs to China," says guest Robert Scott, senior international economist with the Economic Policy Institute.
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ROBERT SCOTT: China is perhaps one of the United States� most significant trading partners, and we have the most unequal trading relationship with China of any country in the world. We import almost five times as much from China as we export to them. Over the last nine years, the United States has lost about two-and-a-half million jobs due to growing trade deficits with China, more than a half-million jobs in the last year alone. We�ve lost jobs in every state. We�ve lost jobs in every congressional district in the country. And I�ve produced studies that have documented all of this.