"The People Are Rising" - Robert Reich

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http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2006/10/people-are-rising.html

A Republican operative told me the other day that if Republicans could only get Americans to focus on the economy instead of Iraq, the GOP could hold on to the House. He's got it completely wrong. A big reason Republican poll numbers are sinking around the country is Americans are focusing on the economy.

The great sucking sound you hear every time Bush or any other Republican says the economy is doing fine is the collective inhalation of tens of millions of Americans, shocked that their leaders are so out of touch. Republican candidates are dropping like dead fruit flies across North and South Carolina, in Iowa, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, through Ohio, upstate New York, and Connecticut, in Missouri and Montana -- everywhere wages and jobs are under sharpest assault -- because Republicans won’t admit what their constituents know: that wages are stuck in the mud, that job security is gone, that pensions are drying up, that health insurance costs are out of control, that housing prices (the only nest eggs left) are leveling out or falling. The only people who are getting much out of this economy are in the top one percent – earning over $800 grand a year. They’re taking home almost 20 percent of total income. Back in 1980, the top one percent took home 8 percent of total income.

Bush’s father was sent packing in 1992 when he insisted the economy was in fine shape. He sounded looney – as if he lived on another planet. It’s too late to uproot the current Bush but Americans are ready to uproot congressional Republicans who have shown not a jot of what most people are going through.

Worse yet, over the last few years Congressional Republicans gave away the store to big corporations and the rich, and robbed average working people. At the behest of the credit-card industry, they made personal bankruptcy almost impossible, while allowing big companies to declare bankruptcy and rid themselves of pension and health obligations to their workers. At the behest of the oil and gas industry, they gave away billions in subsidies, while oil companies got record profits and most people paid through their noses for gas and home heating oil. At the behest of the drug companies, they created a Medicare drug benefit that prevented Medicare from using its huge bargaining leverage to get lower drug prices for the elderly. At the behest of chain stores and the fast-food industry, they blocked the minimum wage from catching up with inflation. At the behest of corporate America, they got rid of overtime pay for millions of hard-working Americans. At the behest of the richest, they created tax cuts that made the rich even richer, while cutting housing assistance and health care for poor kids.

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