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xchrom

(108,903 posts)
Sat Dec 1, 2012, 10:16 AM Dec 2012

Compromise: A Misnomer for Absurdly Unequal Deal to Resolve Budget-Cliff Issues

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/12/01-1


Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and David Cote (c.) CEO of Honeywell international and part of the steering committee of the Campaign to Fix the Debt, ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange, October 25. Brendan McDermid/Reuters

Voices of the 1% are dominating the media and congressional discourse regarding the “fiscal cliff” by offering a “compromise” which justifies significant cuts in the safety-net “entitlements” by promising economic growth as a mask for their own self-interest. Their claim of the need for an economic environment offering more “certainty” for Wall Street and Corporate America is merely cover for establishing new rules and tax breaks to further enrich themselves.


This pole of the debate has recently been articulated by Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs and a key leader of the Fix the Debt coalition of 95 corporations. Blankfein holds out this tantalizing prospect: “There is a huge amount of investible cash that is now sitting on the sidelines, waiting for sensible reforms,” Blankfein stated in a Nov. 14th Wall Street Journal editorial. All of this job-creating investment will be unlocked, once President Obama and the Democrats simply accede to “sensible” changes in Social Security and Medicare, such as raising the eligibility age for both programs.

Wealthy executives like himself—Blankfein hauled in $16,164,405 in 2011—are willing to pay somewhat higher taxes so long as there is “flexibility and “shared sacrifices.” Blankfein and his Fix the Debt allies are quite prepared to be “flexible” in agreeing to pay a 4% increase in his income above $250,000, “but only if they are joined by serious cuts in discretionary spending and entitlements”. He apparently perceives an equivalent level of “shared sacrifices” betweent his modest tax increase and a new two-year delay in a 65-year old worker with meager income waiting to receive a Security check and the same two years to obtain healthcare coverage through Medicare. When he calls for ordinary Americans to “lower their expectations,” Blankfein seemingly believes that if you are a multi-millionaire or billionaire, you are entitled to have unlimited expectations and continued massive financial returns from society.

Meanwhile, even as Blankfein and his allies demand harsh sacrifces from those living in already-precarious cirucmstances in the name of lowering the government’s deficit, Blankfein and the Fix the Debt coalition are busy promoting the notion that US coprorations should no longer be obligated to pay taxes on their plants and other operations located outside the US. This proposed "territorial tax system" would exempt their companies' foreign profits from taxation, saving them $134 billion in taxes, according to a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies titled "The CEO Campaign to ‘Fix’ the Debt: A Trojan Horse for Massive Corporate Tax Breaks." Some cynics who question the depth of Blankfein’s commitment to deficit-cutting will surely suggest that the estimated $134 billion could help pay off the federal budget deficit.
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Compromise: A Misnomer for Absurdly Unequal Deal to Resolve Budget-Cliff Issues (Original Post) xchrom Dec 2012 OP
K&R DJ13 Dec 2012 #1
These fucks are making re-think my anti-capital punishment and more vexing my anti-corruption of TheKentuckian Dec 2012 #2

TheKentuckian

(24,949 posts)
2. These fucks are making re-think my anti-capital punishment and more vexing my anti-corruption of
Sat Dec 1, 2012, 01:14 PM
Dec 2012

blood beliefs.

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