Obama Budget Proposal: Cuts To Target Working Poor, Middle Class & Students

[Amerigo Vespucci]

Obama Budget Proposal: Cuts To Target Working Poor, Middle Class & Students



http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/13/obama-budget-proposal-cut_n_822689.html

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama, less than two months after signing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans into law, is proposing a budget to congress that attacks programs that assist the working poor, help the needy heat their homes, expand access to graduate-level education and undermine that type of community-based organizations that gave the president his start in Chicago.

***

Those reductions -- averaging just over $100 billion each year -- are achieved mainly by squeezing social programs. A deal struck to extend the Bush tax cuts for just two years, meanwhile, increased the deficit by $858 billion dollars. More than $500 billion of that bargain constituted tax cuts, with billions more funding business tax breaks and a reduction in the estate tax. Roughly $56 billion went to reauthorize emergency unemployment benefits.

The president's budget was expected to mostly target "non-defense discretionary spending," which makes up less than one-quarter of the overall budget, making balancing the budget with such cuts mathematically impossible.

Indeed, the driver of the deficit is tax cuts. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that as a result of the tax cut deal, the projected deficit in Obama's budget will reach a "record" level of $1.6 trillion this year, though that figure, relative to the size of the American economy, is far lower than many other governments around the world, according to data compiled by the Central Intelligence Agency. And the relative deficit is well below the levels of the 1940s, a time of economic prosperity. "President Barack Obama's 2012 budget proposal projects this year's deficit will reach $1.6 trillion, the largest on record, as December's tax-cut deal begins to reduce federal revenues, a senior Democrat said Sunday," the Journal reported Sunday evening. (The deficit is only a record if it is neither adjusted for inflation nor considered relative to the size of GDP.)

[katnapped]

1. Yes, "hard choices" had to be made...

Except for tax cuts and other benefits for the rich...those were easy to get behind.

[HereSince1628]

2. It is as it always has been...democrats can get policies through that

will cost everyone EXCEPT the wealthy.

We got the New Deal and we got the Great Society, because programs like SS were bought and paid for by working people.
The now depopulated middle class believed in a society that was cooperative and willingly paid taxes because of the good things tax dollars did for EVERYONE.

Without the middle class we are ruled by anxieties at two ends of the economic structure. On the one end there are immortal corporations, and the boyars that run them, dedicated to the principle of greed. On the other end there are the poor who have little left to give and very jealously guard what they have.

America still believes in seeing green, but the meaning of that has changed radically. It has nothing to do with greener pastures for all.

[atreides1]

9. About that Middle Class

What you say about the Middle Class, is true...but what isn't said speaks much louder!

It was elements of that same Middle Class that voted for and supported the Tea Party politicians that are now in office...not only in Washington, but in several states where they control both the legislature and the executive branch.

Yes, they'll get those cuts that they screamed for...but they'll share in the pain...along with the rest of us.

[HereSince1628]

17. I don't know many people left in the middle class and none

of those people I do know supported tea-party candidates.

Lots of people consider themselves middle class, because middle class is associated with having "arrived" in a life that allowed a person securities in life: a good job that provided a good diet, a decent home, a retirement, medical care etc.

It's pretty clear that several decades of falling real incomes and greater reliance on consumer credit, and the legal chicanery that made that credit available, caused many Americans to acquire the appearance of middle class lives while actually mortgaging their security. There was a great illusion of belonging to a middle class while actually, their securities of all sorts were eroding away.

People who now cannot claim those securities who are missing any combination of 2 or more of the following--job, food, clothing, home (with heat), medical care, retirement--can only claim to have FALLEN from the middle class. And they've fallen into even less secure classes, which for tens of millions can't even be considered working class because they actually _have no work(!)_.

Many of these former middleclass, who are now fallen, and many of the former working class once 'middleclass pretenders' jealously guard the little that they have and fear taxes and federal deficits and hate social programs that could create deficits and portend future tax bills.

I hear a LOT of these people around me when I go into stores.

On this lower end of things, a deluded subpopulation of Americans populate a ficticious middleclass free of its attendant middleclass values. That place has long been a jealous place where people fear competition from immigrants, reverse discrimination, and "others" getting food stamps, heating subsidies etc. They hate people who live in cities which always seem to their eyes to get a better shake than their small town or fringe suburb.

The tea-party is over-filled with this set of very insecure people and it lives in places like small town Minnesota where Bachman hails from. If you understand this about tea-partiers you can understand why they voted republican--because greed and insecurity interesect on the issue of taxes. But the underlying drives of the GOP business class and the tea-partiers are really separate. If you watch what is happening inside the legislature in Washington you can see the gulf between the insecure jealous and the traditionally greedy growing every week.

The insecure have found there voice and it is that of the tea-party. Very unlike the middle class which was forward looking, the newly minted insecure class that dominates the tea-party want everyone to be absolutely just as miserable as they are.

[xchrom]

3. well -- it will be what ever it is.

and as we are so often 'told' -- in the sincerest common sense tone -- where else are we going to go?

and if the party and the prez does poorly in the polls -- we will common sense-ically be 'nadered'.

[fasttense]

4. Everyone making less than $20,000 a year (or family with less than $40,000)

is funding the tax give aways for the filthy rich.

Talk about trickle down economics.

So, now the middle class and poor need only hang in there until the uber rich piss out a minimum wage, no benefits job. They would pay you less if they could get away with it.

Heck of a job Obama.

[dennis4868]

5. Huffungton Post and DU - one of a kind....

instead of discussing the good things in Obama's budget that help people (there is plenty of it), the focus here and HuffPost is too look at the negative only....if you are liberal, you have to be negative at something or life is not normal.

[_ed_]

7. Hide your head in the sand

Obama just supported the Bush tax cuts on the backs of the poor, and all you care about is the "rep" of your dear leader. Very telling that you talk about "liberals" and don't include yourself. Another person who puts party and personality over policy.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

10. Didn't your mother tell you?

If you don't have something nice to say...

[dennis4868]

23. He supported in order to get...

things that people needed badly (e.g. unemployment insurance for millions of people)....don't be misleading and act as if Obama went around the country lobbying for tax cuts for the rich...he did not want it but had no other choice....he is not a king and cannot get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it - that is what you think and you have to get with reality!

[_ed_]

27. Keep apologizing for him

and making excuses. It's called fucking leadership! He could have made the case that Republicans were holding unemployment benefits hostage to tax cuts for the rich. He didn't.

He's either stupid, naiive, or complicit. After two years, I've come to the conclusion that he's complicit. We need to face facts: we elected a deeply conservative man with deeply held conservative principles.

[dennis4868]

28. I guess to you...

fucking leadership means Obama saying "fuck you" to the constitution and passing laws all by himself...WTF are you talking about? Other progressive dem presidents had super majorities in congress and Obama on the other hand had to deal with a daily fillubuster from the party of NO and even problems from the blue dogs....I am not apologizing for him, I only thank the good lord that he is our president.

OBAMA THE ONLY ADULT IN THE ROOM
http://blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/

[UnrepentantLiberal]

31. The people he's said "fuck you" to are

liberals.

[_ed_]

33. Not true

He's also said "fuck you" to:

- progressives
- the poor
- people who live in cold places
- college students
- veterans


But not to:

- bankers
- defense contractors
- drug companies
- insurance companies
- oil companies
- Republicans

[dennis4868]

39. this is the worst post of all time

www.whatthefuckhasobamadonesofar.com

[_ed_]

32. Another DLC'er

What country do you live in? Obama had (1) The Executive Branch and (2) The Legislative Branch (both houses). You can't rewrite American history that happened a few years ago.

Bush didn't have supermajorities...how did he accomplish all of his crap?

By the way, you can't thank "the good lord" for anything because he's a figment of your imagination.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

29. If he wasn't a Blue Dog

he would have backed them into a corner and forced a showdown rather than agree to those tax cuts and then rape the middle and lower classes with spending cuts. How is this "change I can believe in"?

[_ed_]

34. You can't argue with a conservative

whether the conservative happens to call themselves a "Democrat." These DLC types will defend Obama no matter what he does. They are sheep like the people who followed Bush no matter what he did. It's bad when either side does it. They don't give two shits about policy.

[dennis4868]

40. he was dealing with a party that did not give a shit about running the country off the cliff...

Rachel Maddow had a whole show about that...guess you missed it...you cannot back a terrorist (i.e., a repub) into a corner who is willing to die (i.e., bring down the entire fucking country with them)...Obama has to govern and care for those who need the most help (i.e., the unemployed) so he gave in on tax cuts for unemployment insurance and other important things....

[dennis4868]

24. he supported the tax cuts only because he wanted the

things that people needed badly (e.g. unemployment insurance for millions of people)....don't be misleading and act as if Obama went around the country lobbying for tax cuts for the rich...he did not want it but had no other choice....he is not a king and cannot get whatever he wants, whenever he wants it - that is what you think and you have to get with reality!

[_ed_]

35. Poor powerless President Obama

Too bad we couldn't elect him to a position where he had some power.

Too bad he couldn't make his case in the media, with the American people. He was forced to wait until the last minute and just do whatever the Republicans want. Poor Obama!

[Autumn]

8. Well congratulations on you not being a liberal.

I have tried to give it up but haven't been able to. Too many core beliefs I haven't been able to get rid of.

[woo me with science]

15. [phone] nt

[Autumn]

19. Some posts just open your eyes

and scream out the truth.

[dennis4868]

26. I am very much liberal...

buy not like most on DU who have no clue what Obama is up against with the congress he has and many of you expect everything by yesterday when Obama plainly said during 2008 that change takes a long time, maybe 2 terms....real liberals are realist.

OBAMA, THE ONLY ADULT IN THE ROOM!http://blackwaterdog.wordpress.com/

[_ed_]

36. You're a liberal who defends illiberal policies

I think I know another word for that.

Real liberals also seem to not understand grammar and spelling.

[Dappleganger]

38. Hypocrisy...

runs rampant on these forums, unfortunately. I stand for principles and not a person.

[Dappleganger]

37. The president has given republicans everything they wanted...

and then some. As a person who knocked on doors for him and voted for him, I am entitled to my outrage that he is not being the person he portrayed himself to be.

Congratulations on your "realism" because that is flushing our country down the shitter. I happen to STAND for something and will call bullshit when I see it.

[piratefish08]

14. hope and change. keep on keepin' on!

[barbiegeek]

6. I wanna cry.

[ladjf]

11. One wrong move after another. nt

[piratefish08]

12. I sadly no longer expect anything but capitalist, war hungry behavior from him,

so I'm never disappointed anymore.

[UnrepentantLiberal]

22. Barack Hussein O'Bush

If only we were as smart as he is. Sigh...

[woo me with science]

13. Primary him.

This is obscene.

[piratefish08]

16. I'm off this train. I will vote for a primary challenger or third party.

Enough is fucking enough.

[OhioChick]

20. This is getting insane already n/t

[Donnachaidh]

18. [phone] n/t

[cali]

21. disgraceful.

I really don't have words for my sadness and rage over this.

[dennis4868]

25. very misleading headline...

by HuffPost but that is not suprising...

[Biker13]

30. I Agree!

I'm in Idaho, and everyone I know relies on heating supplements, and I mean EVERYONE!

Of course, Idaho is also in the process of taking collective bargaining away from the Teachers Union.

Yeah, "Right to work" way to go...

Biker's Old Lady