Fiscal Cliffs: Can We Drive The Rich Over One, Leave The People Safe?

[marmar]

from the Working Life blog:


Fiscal Cliffs: Can We Drive The Rich Over One, Leave The People Safe?
Posted on 03 October 2012.


People complain a lot about Congress not working hard enough. For my money, and the money and pocketbooks of millions of people, I’d be happy to give the entire lot of them say a year off. Then, maybe, we could enroll them in an advanced political “recovery” program and wean them off this idiotic obsession with the non-existent debt and deficit crisis.

Here come the “serious” people in Congress, aided and abetted by their willing transcribers of press releases (formerly known as “journalists”), clamoring about the mythical “fiscal cliff”:

Senate leaders are closing in on a path for dealing with the “fiscal cliff” facing the country in January, opting to try to use a postelection session of Congress to reach agreement on a comprehensive deficit reduction deal rather than a short-term solution.

enate Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on the details, and House Republicans continue to resist any discussion of tax increases. But lawmakers and aides say that a bipartisan group of senators is coalescing around an ambitious three-step process to avert a series of automatic tax increases and deep spending cuts.

First, senators would come to an agreement on a deficit reduction target — likely to be around $4 trillion over 10 years — to be reached through revenue raised by an overhaul of the tax code, savings from changes to social programs like Medicare and Social Security, and cuts to federal programs. Once the framework is approved, lawmakers would vote on expedited instructions to relevant Congressional committees to draft the details over six months to a year.

If those efforts failed, another plan would take effect, probably a close derivative of the proposal by President Obama’s fiscal commission led by Erskine B. Bowles, the Clinton White House chief of staff, and former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, a Republican. Those recommendations included changes to Social Security, broad cuts in federal programs and actions that would lower tax rates over all but eliminate or pare enough deductions and credits to yield as much as $2 trillion in additional revenue.

If you read the entire article you’d probably think you missed the part quoting, or simply referencing, the opinion that there is no “fiscal cliff” or debt or deficit crisis– an opinion held by a variety of capable people such as Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Well, no, you didn’t miss that info because it just wasn’t there.

Because the entire political and media conventional wisdom universe simply accepts the phony crisis as fact. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.workinglife.org/2012/10/03/fiscal-cliffs-can-we-drive-the-rich-over-one-leave-the-people-safe/

[pnwmom]

1. No. Not unless you consider every homeowner and every retiree with an IRA

as "rich."

But that doesn't mean we're in the midst of a debt "crisis." I agree with Krugman that we shouldn't be obsessing about debt now, but doing as a government what we need to do to stimulate the economy.