The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party’s Three Phase Austerity Plan for America

[unhappycamper]

The ‘Repo-Demo’ Party’s Three Phase Austerity Plan for America
by Jack Rasmus
Published on Thursday, December 23, 2010 by In These Times

The Bush tax cuts are now extended. What cost $3.4 trillion over the past decade, 80% of which accrued to the wealthiest households and U.S. corporations, will now cost another $802 billion over the next two years and a projected $4 trillion over the coming decade.

But the Bush tax cut extension just passed by a political elite increasingly united on economic policy—a ‘Repo-Demo’ Party dominated by corporate interests—is only the first of three phases in a new policy offensive designed to protect the incomes of the wealthy and corporate America for another decade, to be paid for directly by middle- and working-class America. Together, the three phases represent the emerging U.S. variant of a general austerity strategy, similar in objective but different in content to other austerity programs now emerging as well in the Eurozone, Japan and elsewhere.

The second phase will likely be implemented in the next three months, before the ceiling on the federal debt has to be lifted. It will take the form of massive spending cuts in the U.S. budget, targeting Social Security and Medicare in particular. (A parallel draconian slash in spending will occur at the state level, targeting Medicaid and education).

Social Security has been a prime target since the Reagan years. Unable to cut it in the early 1980s, Reagan instead settled on a major increase in the payroll tax in 1984, creating a $2.5 trillion surplus over the last 25 years. However, that surplus was ‘borrowed’ every year by Congress to cover up in part U.S. budget deficits created annually since the 1980s to pay for war spending and tax cuts.

All that remains of the surplus in the Social Security Trust Fund are government IOUs promising to replace the shortfall when necessary—a replacement we’ll never see in our lifetimes.

[xchrom]

1. recommend

[Skink]

2. Raising taxes works.

eventually the top will pay drastically more. Probably not in the first half of this century though.

[jannyk]

3. k&r!

[mmonk]

4. With no opposition, this version of America is a steam roller.

Since economic justice cannot be won at the ballot box, we have to come up with alternatives organically at the local level. We've (progressives) lost the ideological battle that began with Reagan and have to adjust to the changing conditions without a political entity.

[bvar22]

5. You just hate the unemployed!!!!!

(heard all over DU)

Hey...doesn't have to make sense.

[Hydra]

7. A lot of stuff on DU hasn't been making sense since mid 2007

But I've seen a remarkable level of clarity hitting lately. I suppose you can't step on EVERYONE'S toes more than once and expect them to stay happy with you.

[defendandprotect]

6. Crimes against the public by corrupt government officials --