Hint: It's NOT about the intrepretation of the Constitution...........that's just a convenient distraction for some.
QuoteThe rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.
Many corporations, including General Electric and Exxon-Mobil, have made billions in profits while using loopholes to avoid paying any federal income taxes. We lose $100 billion every year in federal revenue from companies and individuals who stash their wealth in tax havens off-shore like the Cayman Islands and Bermuda. The sum of all the revenue collected by the Treasury today totals just 14.8% of our gross domestic product, the lowest in about 50 years.
In the midst of this, Republicans in Congress have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of the wealthy and large multinational corporations so that they do not contribute a single penny toward deficit reduction.
If the Republicans have their way, the entire burden of deficit reduction will be placed on the elderly, the sick, children and working families. In the midst of a horrendous recession that is already causing severe pain for average Americans, this approach is morally grotesque. It's also bad economic policy.
President Obama and the Democrats have been extremely weak in opposing these right-wing extremist proposals.
Although the United States now has the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major industrialized country, Democrats have not succeeded in getting any new revenue from those at the top of the economic ladder to reduce the deficit.
Instead, they've handed the wealthy even more tax breaks. In December, the House and the Senate extended President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and lowered estate tax rates for the wealthiest Americans. In April, to avoid the Republican effort to shut down the government, they allowed $38.5 billion in cuts to vitally important programs for working-class and middle-class Americans.
Now, with the U.S. facing the possibility of the first default in our nation's history, the American people find themselves forced to choose between two congressional deficit-reduction plans. The plan by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, which calls for $2.4 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts in areas such as education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families and the most vulnerable.
The Senate plan appropriately calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But it does not ask the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to make any sacrifice.
The Reid plan is bad. The constantly shifting plan by House Speaker John Boehner is much worse. His $1.2 trillion plan calls for no cuts in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and it requires a congressional committee to come up with another $1.8 trillion in cuts within six months of passage.
Those cuts would mean drastic reductions in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. What's more, Mr. Boehner's plan would reopen the debate over the debt ceiling, which is now paralyzing Congress, just six months from now.
While all of this is going on in Washington, the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want wealthy individuals and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. They also want bedrock social programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be protected. For example, a July 14-17 Washington Post/ABC News poll found that 72% of Americans believe that Americans earning more than $250,000 a year should pay more in taxes.
In other words, Congress is now on a path to do exactly what the American people don't want. Americans want shared sacrifice in deficit reduction. Congress is on track to give them the exact opposite: major cuts in the most important programs that the middle class needs and wants, and no sacrifice from the wealthy and the powerful.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the American people are so angry with what's going on in Washington? I am too.
Mr. Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, is a member of the Senate Budget Committee and the longest serving independent in congressional history.
Cross-posted at The Wall Street Journal.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rep-bernie-sanders/why-americans-are-so-angr_b_913393.html?ir=Yahoo
The Democratic Amendment to Boehner's Plan presented by Rep. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.):
QuoteWhen Hochul rose for permission to speak Friday and was asked by the chair if she opposed the Boehner bill, she answered with enthusiasm.
"Oh, yes, I am opposed to this bill," Hochul said.
She then introduced her party's attempt to modify it. It was an amendment that, like Hochul herself, embodied the Democratic argument that the super rich and corporations should give up some of their tax breaks before the government could cut things like programs for children and the elderly.
"My amendment is a simple statement of America's priorities," Hochul said. "It says before we cut education for our children, we first must cut subsidies for big oil and corporate jets."
She used the phrases "big oil" and "corporate jets" repeatedly, in a sign Democrats see those talking points as effective.
"I say slashing programs for seniors, young people, [the] middle class -- all because we're afraid of the influence of big oil -- that is wrong on so many levels," she said.
And she lambasted Republicans for "playing chicken" with America's economy by holding the raise in the debt limit captive to massive cuts in domestic spending.
“Never, never in this history [of America] has there been an intentional disaster, perpetrated by the very people who were elected to be the caretakers of this country, and that is exactly what will happen if we refuse to take action, prevent default and pay our nation’s bills now,†Hochul said.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/30/kathy-hochul-debt-election-2012_n_914025.html
QuoteHouse Budget Committee's chairman, Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would slash and privatize Medicare. It would cost Medicare recipients an extra $6,000 a year by 2021 if the measure passed the Senate, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
The budget-cutting measure passed by the House Friday is even worse.........dubbed the Ryan budget on steroids, it's estimated that it would cost people $2,500 more per year for Medicare than with Ryan's plan.( costing seniors and the disabled a total of $8,500 per year............but increasing taxes for the ultra-wealthy is just too much ::) )
Further, Democrats argue Boehner's debt bill could even kill Medicare.
QuoteWe... owe... the money. We elected incompetent fools/rapacious petrogarchs to high office. We gave them a credit card. They maxed it out. They got several more and maxed those out, too. And we are the co-signers.
Raise the debt ceiling, like every president has bitten the bullet and done.
Raise taxes and take your medicine. You cared, innocently, about helping others. No shame in that. But simultaneously, you got married to a couple of idiots who blew all your money and left the whole family with nothing to show for it. Saddam's dead? Osama's dead? Is that gonna help you get a job? Pay your rent? Buy your kid some sneakers for school this fall?
Wake up. We gotta suck it up. Pay this bill. And have a loooooong talk about how we never get here again, while still maintaining our identity as a great country made up of great, caring people.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alec-baldwin/its-time-to-suck-it-up-an_b_913810.html
I"m angry because we have the wealthy voting for themselves and that just seems wrong and more wrong. If they can help themselves the wealthy will always vote and move laws and bills to benifit themselves. I think that's a fact of life and we are just going to have to realize that those that don't have the cash to make shit happen have to scream and hollar louder and more irritating and be more forceful to get a bit of a balance. I think it's hilarious for these people on tv giving their opinion and i guaranty most make over 250k a year so thier opinions are null and void for me. In order to turn this around i we just have to unravel the mess that bush made starting from the beginning to the end...tax breaks...education bs...it'll get better but theres a whole hell of a lot of healing to happen before the working man is no longer mad as hell.