They really do love to cock back the trigger on the big three, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, don't they? That's what all the austerity freakout is about, trying to rip apart the safety net for all Americans to the benefit of Wall Street and private insurance companies. Speaker Boehner
put drastic cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid in his plan that would've been agreed to within six months.
Senator Reid's plan also creates a Super Committee that would decide on "entitlement" reform that actually are cuts. That aspect of his plan is similar to the Super Committee in Boehner's plan. Negotiations are still being undertaken on Senator Reid's plan, and midnight is the deadline for the Republicans to give their input, and so far, Reid isn't hearing any from them on his plan.
Reid said Friday that he has suggested using the Gang of Six’s work as a trigger mechanism to build bipartisan support, but not a single Republican has said it would be enough to win his or her vote for a Senate plan to raise the debt limit.
“We considered that. The problem to this point is that we have not had a single Republican come forward and say they’d be willing to do something like that,” Reid said. “As I said, I’m anxious to talk to people about how we should move forward. I’ve invited the Republicans to call me, come and see me.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said trigger mechanisms have become a focus of private negotiations.
“That’s what it’s all about, whether it’s the debt ceiling or balanced-budget amendments — the question is, how do you guarantee at the end of the period the joint committee is meeting that something happens,” said Durbin. “The only way to do it and be sure that it works is to make sure there is adequate pain on both sides of the aisle.”
The ones firing the gun at the big three: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid won't be the ones to feel the pain. We regular Americans would. Your grandmother would feel the pain of losing $1,300 a year in her Social Security benefits, you wouldn't be able to enroll into Medicare before the age of 67 by the time 2030 rolls around, and you would be at the mercy of private insurance companies. Veterans, who have given their time, blood, and limbs in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars overseas, would also be hurt by the change in benefits, as you can see here:
- The chained CPI would raise taxes on all middle class families—while leaving millionaires and billionaires virtually untouched. The Tax Policy Center found that by 2021, households with incomes of about $137,216 or less, which make up the bottom 80% in the income scale, would see their average tax rates go up more than households with incomes of $137,217 or more, which make up the top 20% of the income scale (0.2% vs. 0.1%). Worse, the top 0.1% would see virtually no change in their average federal tax rate. [See Figure 1 below.]
- The chained CPI would raise taxes on the middle class at a time when progressivity in the tax code is at its lowest point in decades. We should be thinking about ways to shift the tax burden back on to people who can most afford to pay, not how to collect more taxes from the middle class.
We have been feeling the pain since the economic recession began. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, the unemployment rate is inching upwards, and our politicians' insane pursuit of the austerity agenda will not help everyday working Americans recover in their pocketbooks.
We know who's not feeling the pain.
- The wealthy on Wall Street.
- The big corporations sitting on trillions of dollars in cash that could've been used to hire Americans.
- The banks, the mortgage firms, and special corporate interests.
- Politicians in D.C., from those at the bottom all the way up to the White House, aren't going to feel the pain of the austerity agenda.
They'll just be fine. They'll rake in the dollars, give speeches, go around on tours talking about corporate responsibility and public-private partnerships, while we're stuck in a what could be a long, lost decade. This austerity agenda has never been about equal shared sacrifice, it has always been about more sacrifice being leveraged upon our backs so they can rake in the money from Wall Street.
This is the Shock Doctrine being applied to America, and we're the ones being shocked right now. Come midnight, we'll see what happens to the Reid plan as reports show it to be moving even further to the right.