Cat Food Commission II – wasted opportunity | Philadelphia Independent Media Center

When I read about Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) and, unfortunately, a majority of other Democrats on the “Super-Committee” (Which progressives refer to as “Cat Food Commission II”) offering a radically regressive plan to make $500 billion in Medicare cuts, I read a few more sentences. I saw that, sure, fine, okay, the plan would also ask for $300 billion in stimulus funds, but the result of that would obviously be $200 billion in lost consumer demand as people would either lose work from sickness or would spend money they would otherwise spend on other things. I shot out a few letters to my representatives, but I agree with this piece that says the proposal was a horribly wasted opportunity to make a clear statement to the American people as to what Democrats actually want to do and what Democrats really stand for.

Really? Do Democrats really want to see $2 trillion in spending cuts balanced against only $1 trillion in new taxes? At a time of 9% unemployment?!?! At a time when the Occupy Wall Street movement should have been making it absolutely crystal clear to politicians that the time for austerity measures is long over?!?!!?

How on Earth could Democratic politicians have possibly concluded that Republicans were going to agree to new taxes? What on Earth made them think that anybody in America was so anxious for an agreement that they'd take a slowdown in the economy in return for a wildly uneven agreement that would hurt an already-hurting economy still further?

And remember the outcome of the debt-limit debacle. Speaker of the House John Boehner said he got 98% of what his side wanted out of the deal and, not surprisingly, President Obama's approval rating promptly cratered. That's because he gave up far too much in return for far too little.

Sorry, but Baucus' offer is a major FAIL in every possible way that one can look at it. Fortunately for the American people, Republicans turned up their noses at the offer and refused to even discuss it.

Comments

WaPo "Editorializes on the front page"

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Sun, 10/30/2011 - 5:01pm

Washington Post puts together an excruciatingly bad front page editorial piece (They pretend it's a news piece) that completely misrepresents the status of Social Security. Piece includes link to mailing list with which to contact media and request correction.

MoveOn, Action United and Neighborhood Networks

Submitted by Rich Gardner on Tue, 11/01/2011 - 2:49pm

will assemble at the Northwest Corner of City Hall at 11:45am on Wednesday 2 November and march to Senator Pat Toomey's office at noon to insist that Cat Food Commission II plans to impoverish American citizens and reduce us all to the days of Charles Dickens' London be dropped immediately.
Toomey "is a major proponent of massive cuts to social security, medicare and medicaid and thinks he can bamboozle us into thinking that what's good for Wall St. is good for the rest of us. Let's tell him we're not fooled!"

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