:toast:
~snippet~
Grover Norquist said in 2001: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.” Republicans in Congress are currently using the supposed threat of the national debt to demand an end to stimulus efforts and drastic cuts in social programs. Is this deficit scare orchestrated by the right as a means to fulfill Norquist’s dream?
It is orchestrated by the right. The reasons for the huge deficit are primarily tax cuts and the deliberate retention of tax loopholes by Congress. So we have a tax system that doesn’t raise enough money because it doesn’t tax corporations and the very rich. At the same time, we spend enormous amounts on defense and in all the talk about cutting discretionary spending there has been scarcely any talk at all of cutting defense spending.
And in the short time he’s been in office, Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker cut taxes, and then a few weeks later announces a deficit in the state budget that requires him to strip public sector workers of collective bargaining rights and threaten to call out the National Guard to back up that promise. That’s obviously a created crisis, and so is the federal deficit crisis.
People like Grover Norquist love these crises because they are an opportunity to cut those parts of government that they don’t like. The right is not against government, the right is against those parts of government that are responsive to the needs of poor and working people. They’re not targeting the subsidies gained by the health insurance companies; they’re not targeting the military industrial complex. They’re only targeting the people’s programs.
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7081/fox_populi----
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
