Resisting GOP rhetoric
It’s interesting – and revealing – that many of the Republicans yelling loudest now about our country’s budget deficit were silent on the issue for eight years during which President George Bush took President Clinton’s Democratic-sponsored surplus and ran up the country’s debt.
They presumably believed it was worth spending wildly on two of their favorite initiatives: the war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich.
Yes, our national debt is a major problem if uncorrected over the coming years.
But the recession we’re trying to climb out of is also very dangerous. It will be disastrous for millions of suffering people, as well as for the country’s future prosperity, if the economy stays in the doldrums.
How can we significantly reduce the budget deficit unless many more people can find adequate work?
Once people are getting paid, and not living in constant fear of losing their jobs or their houses, they’ll be spending more money, and when individuals and companies are earning more, government revenues will increase, thereby reducing the deficit.
The escalating cost of health care to our overall economy will still be a challenge, but thanks to healthcare reform brought about by President Obama and the Democratic Congress, access to decent health care should gradually improve for most Americans, and the staggering burden of insurance premiums on employers should gradually be reduced.
That is, the healthcare cost problem is manageable given the political will to solve it in a way that is good for Americans’ physical and fiscal health.
It’s amazing that some of the fiercest critics of the deficit seem uninterested in avoiding waste in healthcare spending. They haven’t minded healthcare costs as long as private-sector insurers, pharmaceuticals, and other companies are making big profits, often at the expense of our well-being. (Witness the Republican-engineered Medicare Part D, with its prohibition against Medicare’s bargaining for prescription drugs, and the infamous doughnut hole. Fortunately the healthcare reform legislation of 2010 will improve Medicare.)
State budgets across the country are undergoing severe cuts as a result of tax revenues lost because workers and employers aren’t making enough money. (By law, most states are forced to balance their budgets.)
When enough revenue isn’t coming in, states must make painful cuts. Cuts that affect each of us in some way, whether it’s larger class sizes for our kids; slower response by EMTs, fire, and police; deteriorating public buildings and parks; unrepaired roads; weakened public health initiatives; excessive college fees; lack of investment in projects that would improve quality of life; more people suffering from insufficient food, shelter, and other basic necessities.
The budget reductions in many states (and note that the fiscal woes of big states, like California, have economic impacts on the rest of us) will add to the number of Americans who are unemployed. That will further depress economic activity.
The constant drumbeat — led by Republicans in Congress, followed by some Democrats in Republican-leaning states — at this moment about the country’s deficit (admittedly a serious problem) is weakening the political will to extend unemployment benefits and to continue stimulating job growth.
Somehow the foolish idea of “cutting off your nose to spite your face” has taken hold with some citizens frustrated by current economic conditions.
Especially in times like this, we need government policies that protect people from disaster and that invest in America’s future prosperity.
We won’t climb out of the hole if we adopt the Republican philosophy of tax cuts for the rich (it’s the rich who mostly benefit from tax cutting), trickle-down on everyone else.
As President Obama said recently, “After they drove the car into the ditch, made it as difficult as possible for us to pull it back, now they want the keys back. No! You can’t drive. We don’t want to have to go back into the ditch. We just got the car out.”
All Americans have reasons to be grateful for Democratic initiatives that to date have prevented this economic collapse from becoming another Great Depression.
If you don’t know what misery the Great Depression brought about, ask your grandparents or watch a movie about the 1930s.
In those years, they didn’t have unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, FDIC insurance to protect people from bank failures.
Thanks to FDR and other Democratic presidents, Democratic congresses, Democratic governors, and Democratic state legislatures, these and other programs for the common good have prevented much of the desperate hunger and widespread homelessness of the 1930s from recurring today.
Don’t hand the keys over in November.
