Selective Shutdown Over for Pentagon. The Light just got turned on the Kabuki Theater Stage

[Octafish]

74. US shutdown a smokescreen for assault on Social Security, Medicare

Barry Grey
World Socialist Web Site, 3 October 2013

In an interview on day two of the partial shutdown of the US government, broadcast by the pro-business cable TV channel CNBC, President Barack Obama offered talks on cutting basic social programs such as Medicare and Social Security in return for Republican support for funding federal operations and raising the national debt ceiling.

Obama continued to reject any negotiations with House Republicans on a so-called “continuing resolution” to reopen the government that is tied to a delay in implementation of his health care overhaul. At the same time, he linked a “clean” funding bill to passage of legislation to raise the national debt ceiling before the current limit expires and the country goes into default, estimated by the Treasury Department for October 17.

Obama’s remarks added to mounting evidence that behind the appearance of partisan warfare in Washington, the two big business parties are planning to use a crisis produced by an extended government shutdown as a smokescreen for reaching a deal to impose historic attacks on the bedrock social programs left over from the New Deal and Great Society periods.
In the interview, Obama said he agreed on the need to continue eliminating “unnecessary” social programs and was ready to discuss cuts in “long-term entitlement spending.” He also said he would accept Republican demands that there be no increase in personal income tax rates.

SNIP...

In the previous manufactured crises of 2010, 2011 and 2012, Obama had offered to support cuts in cost-of-living raises for Social Security recipients and structural changes in Medicare, such as increasing the eligibility age and introducing means testing, along with sharp cuts in corporate taxes, as part of a broad bipartisan deficit deal.

However, no such deal on entitlement programs was reached. Instead, more than $2 trillion in cuts in domestic nondefense discretionary spending were mandated, bringing this category of social spending in the US—for education, housing, infrastructure, health and safety, the environment, culture—to its lowest level as a percentage of the gross domestic product since the 1950s.

CONTINUED...

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2013/10/03/shut-o03.html



Yet the MIC and wars for profit prove themselves exempt.