Right Wingers Want Their Way Even if it Kills Our Democracy
Friday, May 10, 2013
(Rochester Business Journal)After the Senate vote to block a watered-down
requirement for background
checks on purchasers of lethal weapons, I hear
a refrain from my
childhood in my head. It's from the Webster's
Bible translation of
Matthew: "For what shall it profit a man to
gain the whole world and
lose his own soul?"
Do those words also apply to the nation once
considered the world's
greatest democracy and greatest hope-something
different from the
world's strongest military power? I am not just
talking about the
tragedy of Newtown and our inability as a
nation to respond in any
humane way with the democratic rule of law. To
me, that sentence from
Matthew is a metaphor for the loss of
democracy.
Despite poll after poll finding that
overwhelming majorities of
Republicans and Democrats, gun owners and NRA
members, and about 90
percent of all Americans were in favor of
background checks before
people are allowed to own some of the most
deadly weapons the world has
ever seen, the vote was lost 55-45 in the
Senate. If one were to tally
the populations of the states represented in
the vote, the majority
represented 65 percent of the people, but the
legislation was defeated
by senators representing just 35 percent of the
population.
This is the rule now-and has been for more than
five years. We have had
votes during Barack Obama's presidency when 41
senators from states
representing as little as 25 percent of the
population frustrated the
will of those representing 75 percent of
Americans. That is not
democracy; it is a plutocracy of the wealthy 1
percent and their
lobbyists, aided and abetted by a lunatic
fringe Supreme Court.
That court had the unbelievable audacity to
claim that the Bill of
Rights handed down by the founding fathers
intended personhood for
artificial constructs known as corporations.
Furthermore, corporate
"persons" now have the right to drown out the
exercise of First
Amendment rights by the rest of us, because
free speech is synonymous
with money.
In reality, and without exception, all Western
democracies except ours
legislate based on the will of a simple
majority, 50 percent plus one.
The enforcement of existing laws, such as the
National Labor Relations
Act or Dodd-Frank, which was enacted to protect
us from further
disasters caused by casino capitalism on Wall
Street, have also been
sabotaged by the filibuster. Using this unholy
procedure, a minority has
obstructed agencies that protect our food
safety, environment and many
other public interests, by withholding funding
or refusing for years to
confirm presidential appointees needed to run
these agencies. This
cynical abuse of the rules is for the
minority's political gain at the
expense of democracy. In my view, this sabotage
of democracy constitutes
a form of treason.
In this toxic political climate, President
Obama naively feels compelled
to put "chained CPI" on the table to cut
Social Security benefits,
veterans' benefits and benefits for the
disabled. This change in how
inflation is calculated for cost-of-living
increases would decrease
spending by $163 billion over 10 years-only
about 25 percent of the
revenue that would have been gained if the Bush
tax cuts, which were
supposed to be temporary and created zero jobs,
had been allowed to
expire for the richest Americans.
Some argue that adopting chained CPI is not a
cut but only a reduction
in the rate of increase in future Social
Security spending. Not true.
Many economists have shown that the Consumer
Price Index captures only
about 60 percent of inflation, especially since
volatile items like the
prices of gas and oil are generally excluded
from calculations. The CPI
is designed to stop Social Security benefits
from being deceased by
inflation. If you lower it, you are cutting
benefits, period-by about
$600 a year within the first decade.
Technically, of course, cutting Social Security
does nothing to reduce
the deficit because it has been funded
separately since the bipartisan
compromise of 1983. I know, because I was part
of the lobbying effort
for my union in 1982-83. Labor did not come on
board until the
legislation guaranteed that Social Security
taxes paid would be spent
on-you guessed it-Social Security! Ronald
Reagan, like many before him,
had been spending Social Security revenue on
other budget items.
To guarantee that the revenue went to Social
Security, Treasury notes
were placed in the trust fund, which some
called IOUs. This is why GOP
fiscal conservatives (an oxymoron if ever I've
heard one) want
entitlements cut legislatively. They cannot
default on these Treasury
notes because they are the same Treasury notes
held by our biggest
creditors, China and Japan. To default would
destroy the full faith and
credit of the United States and cause worldwide
economic strife.
It is of interest that not even Rep. Paul
Ryan's GOP budget cut Social
Security, and some Republicans immediately
attacked Obama for cutting
Social Security when he brought up chained CPI.
There are much better
budgetary alternatives. A minute sales tax on
financial speculation
would squeeze small profits out of lightning
stock market trades that
inflate bubbles, benefit only insiders and
caused the Great Recession.
We had speculation taxes until 1966. Such a tax
would raise more money
in a year than chained CPI would save in 10.
Alternatively, we could cut
part of just one defense contract, on the F-35
Joint Strike Fighter,
for 2,457 fighter jets over 10 years at a cost
of $1.5 trillion. Cutting
this contract to, say, 2,200 fighters saves
about $180 billion.
The federal spending cuts already made, still
without the full effects
of the sequester, gave us a poor March jobs
report of a mere 88,000 jobs
gained. This means a sluggish economy. The
sequester and an increase in
payroll taxes are taking too much consumer
demand out of the economy.
The bipartisan Congressional Budget Office says
the cuts from last year
and this year will cut economic and job growth
in half. Any grand
bargain between Obama and the GOP is leaning
toward a decade of cuts in
the range of $3 trillion to $4 trillion, and
this will give us another
lost decade of slowdown in jobs and growth.
Social Security and Medicare
are the crown jewels of the Democratic Party.
Such a grand bargain will
leave working-class voters without trust in
either political party.
All this, and every week I still hear members
of the GOP demand
austerity and a balanced budget, because "we
are not Keynesians";
translated, this means they are members of the
Flat Earth Society. It
seems to be of no concern that balancing the
budget was Herbert Hoover's
policy from 1929 to 1933, or that austerity
has worsened the economic
crisis in the eurozone for three years and has
harmed our own recovery.
Fiscal conservatives claim they hate spending
and big government-unless,
of course, it's for national defense, homeland
security, surveillance,
prisons, the war on drugs, subsidies to big oil
or coal or corporate
agriculture, bank bailouts, tax expenditures
that benefit the rich, or
anything to do with interference in women's
reproductive rights or
women's bodies. Other than that, they hate big
government.
A good place to start addressing the sabotage
of our democracy and the
current economic insanity would be to reform
the filibuster and end the
corporate personhood of Citizens United.

