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Let's end current fiscal insanity

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To the editor:

A February 8th Associated Press article by Stephen Ohlemacher said that "the share of the nation’s economy that Uncle Sam will  take this year will be the lowest since 1950, when the Korean War was just getting under way and for the third straight year, American families and businesses will pay less in federal taxes than they did under President George W. Bush, because of a weak economy and a growing number of tax breaks for the wealthy and poor alike. Income tax payments this year will be nearly 13 percent lower than they were in 2008, the last full year of the Bush presidency. Corporate taxes will be lower by a third, according to projections by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office."In simple terms we have an economy, 70% of which is dependent on consumer spending, with an estimated 25 million workers unemployed or underemployed. Its sort of like trying to run an 8 cylinder car with two cylinders not working nationally and more like three cylinders not working in Highland and Clinton counties.

President Obama, since the day he took office , has been faced with a combination of drastically reduced federal income, the cost of two wars that should never have been engaged in and a pile of unfunded mandates plus ongoing stimulus programs, some of which gave billions to the very entities responsible for the crash of the economy. While I think he might have done a better job handling the situation, I don't think that, in President Obama's words, "giving the car keys back to the people who drove in into the ditch" (as the American voters did in the midterm election) was a good idea and has made putting the economy back on firm footing far more difficult.

Almost all prominent economists agree that the economy is too fragile for the government to start slashing spending until 2012 at the soonest. Even before the recent spike in fuel prices ate up most disposable income for average Americans; pragmatic budget hawks have proposed holding off on deficit reduction until at least 2012 because, until Americans who want to work are once more employed, the government will have insufficient revenue to fund essential programs but pragmatism has not prevailed.

Last December, anticipating that they would win control of the house and possible the senate, Republicans blocked Democrats from approving money to fund the government through 2011 but that lead to an unanticipated result. When Tea Party backed candidates were seated in January they demanded that the GOPs promised 100 billion dollar cut in federal spending, a figure that Republican leaders had meant to apply to the 2012 budget, apply to the remainder of  2011 and, fearing a backlash from the ignorant radicals who have sized control of the nomination process, House Speaker Boener and Senator minority leader McConne, have not stood up against this insanity.

Speaker Boener is quoted as saying, "Democrats answer" ( to the budget crisis) " is to raise taxes and thats not something anyone else is talking about" but he is dead wrong. The vast majority of the American people are talking about just that. A recent Bloomberg poll showed that letting the Bush tax cuts for rich people expire as originally intended was the single most popular way to reduce the federal deficit and a recent Wall Street / NBC poll found that financing the deficit with a surtax on millionaires was next most popular. Republicans claim that wins in the last election gave them a mandate to pursue the very agenda that lead to the near melt down of the economy but poll after poll shows that isn't the case. What the American people want is jobs and an end to giveaways to the rich.

The prospect of more sharp spending cuts in 2011 has left prominent economic forecasters overwhelmingly gloomy. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke estimated that proposed cuts would cost 200,000 American jobs. The firm Microeconomic Forecasters predicted 500,000 job losses and Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moodys,com predicts a loss of 700,000 jobs. I cant find a single economist, other than ones on payrolls of right wing think tanks, who predicts that the proposed cuts in 2011 spending will add jobs.

The aphorism "a rising tide floats all boats" has been misused to justify what has been the largest transfer of wealth from average Americans to the already obscenely wealthy in history. Between 1960 and 1980, when the US economy was largely growing, the wealthiest 1% took home less than 10% of all U.S. income. Since supply side "trickle down" economics  went into effect in 1980, the % of income taken home by the top 1% has grown to 25% and the top 1% controls 42% of the financial wealth of the country. How has that helped reduce the 15+ % unemployment rate in Highland County or the even higher rate in Clinton County. How has that helped the even higher % of people struggling to get by on part time work in our area and across the country?

If the economy is ever to be on solid footing again people must have decent paying full time jobs again. People have to be added to payrolls, not cut in a misguided effort to balance federal budgets on the backs of fewer and fewer working people. The spending cuts proposed by the Republicans come from the 12% of the budget known as "non defense discretionary spending and nothing from medicare, medicade, tax breaks for the rich, interest reduction, military spending social security or any of the major contributors to the deficit. Rather the cuts are targeted at funding for education, housing for the homeless, and investment in infrastructure and etc, and Democrats have largely been unwilling to propose meaningful cuts.

When asked why he robbed banks, Dillinger said, "because that is where the money is". Perhaps we should dig him up and put him in charge of finding money to fund essential services because he would go to where the money is instead of pulling a reverse Robin Hood and robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

Charles Leach
Lynchburg[[In-content Ad]]

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