BUDGET HOW TO GET OUT FROM THE USUAL TRAP?

BUDGET HOW TO GET OUT FROM THE USUAL TRAP?

Is really "the debate" about HOW DEEP TO CUT THE BUDGET?
As Lance Selfa said in http://socialistworker.org/

OR is about:

How much to cut now -$40 or 60 Billion- to debunk faster the current servant of big corporation –Obama- and take their place? If such is the debate and the aim of republicans is to blame only Obama for the current debt crisis and fiscal insolvency, then we are going from bad to worse, or better, we got caught in the usual trap. The trap of not choice for americans but to choose from either side of the same devaluated coin: democrats or republican, both hired and financed by big corporations, so at their service.

The real problem then is: how to go beyond democrats & republicans?:

HOW TO GET OUT FROM THE USUAL TRAP?
Hugo Adan, April 7, 2011
http://nd-hugoadan.blogspot.com/

This article endorse Lance Selfa claims and attempt to develop his line of reasoning.

“We know both parties endorse the austerity agenda” said Lance, but I would say that we know much more than that.

-We know that the government shut down won’t hard the big corporation’s nasty business: the military industrial complex will continue making war crimes & crimes against humanity abroad and in so doing will continue draining the economy.

-We know that wall street speculators will continue fostering foreclosures and stealing QE money (the irresponsible printing of money) , besides profiteering from the previous bailouts –the bulk of current debt- charged to American tax-payers; t

-We know that big Pharma and big insurer corporations will continue profiteering from the current health policy –now via the illegal “obligation to buy insurance” imposed on all Americans;

-We know that the outsourcers -big American Corp- will continue sending jobs abroad while millions of young Americans have not place to work;

-We know that the bureaucrats in both parties, democrats and republicans, won’t be hard. They will continue receiving huge salaries and some of them will find this shut-down a good time to make more money under the table (via corrupted “negotiations” or just like Obama, by launching their candidacy to fish in a messy river (pescar a rio revuelto), the mass-media said that he already got 1bll in donations, who are the donors? Guess!.

-We know that these bureaucrats do not need to buy fake lotteries, they already got it with their by-partisan agreements to set the austerity plan after agreeing in indebting Americans and selling treasury bonds to China and other countries.

-We know that they both, democrats and republicans, agreed not to pass a budget for the 2011 fiscal year because they knew this will create a bonanza game that we have now. So, this "debate" is just a charade, theater or pantomime intended to create a smoke screen on the causes of current economic crisis: the failure of neoliberal economy, its profiteers and the payers: the middle & poor Americans.

- In short, we know that the ones that is going to be hurt by the government shutdown will be common people, the middle and working classes.

Thus, the real cause of this mess is the uncontroled freedom that big corporations have with the neoliberal policies implemented since the Reagan era on. (See Washington consensus effects on current crisis). The big corporations hire the two administrator-team called democrats and republicans to take care of their nasty business.

Who is going to be blamed for the coming mess?; the owners responsible of the circus-show known as “government shut-down” or the pawns hired by big corporations? Both of them?, YES, both of them.

THEN BOTH OF THEM, DEMOCRATS & REPUBLICANS SHOUD BE RIDDED OFF!!
QUE SE VAYAN TODOS!!, Including Obama.

Here the answer to the top question:

STATES SHOULD CREATE THEIR OWN FORM OF GOVERNMENT to re-structure the American political system AND CREATE REAL DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA. Democracy will be the result of the creative imagination and heroic action of common people in all STATES. The perspective of setting up a parliamentary system is one option. The installing of real direct democracy instead of the corrupted representative democracy is the strategic objective to be achieved.

Now the key question: does the circus “government shutdown” make any sense in such perspective? NOT AT ALL.

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Here the article of Lance Selfa. EXTRACTS: Go to web below to see complete art.

The "debate" is how deep to cut, March 2, 2011
http://socialistworker.org/print/2011/03/02/debating-how-deep-to-cut

We know both parties endorse the austerity agenda, but does it make any sense at all?

GET READY for the talk of a federal government shutdown to drag on for weeks to come.

The government is facing a shutdown if Congress doesn't pass a resolution by March 4 [7] to allow the government to continue to spend money. It appeared that the Obama White House and Republicans might reach a deal in time--but for only a two-week time period, guaranteeing that the issue would return again and again.
The White House, the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-led House are playing a game of chicken on the budget that applies to the remainder of the current fiscal year, which ends in September.

The Democrats have themselves to blame for this predicament. Last year, when they held the majority in both houses of Congress, they didn't pass a budget for the 2011 fiscal year. Instead, they depended on "continuing resolutions" to keep the government operating.

For the most part, "continuing resolutions"--congressional actions that authorize existing government programs to go on as before--are pro-forma actions. In the current climate of austerity politics and Tea Party chest-beating, the Republican right wants to use the authorization of spending for the rest of the fiscal year as a means to pressure the Obama administration to agree to deeper cuts in government programs.

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IF THIS seems like déjà vu all over again, there's a reason why.

In 1995, after then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich and his "Republican revolutionaries" took control of Congress at the midpoint of Bill Clinton's first term, there was a major budget standoff. The Republicans thought shutting down the government would force Clinton to accept harsh cuts to Medicare, food stamps and other programs that Clinton had to that point resisted. Believing their own propaganda, the Republicans thought the shock of a government shutdown would rally a spending-weary public to their side.

But once the reality of three weeks of a federal shutdown set in--with federal meat inspections suspended, national parks closed and hundreds of thousands of federal workers forced onto unpaid furloughs--Republicans found that most Americans rejected their scheme. Right-wing House Minority Leader Tom Delay called the government shutdown Gingrich's "biggest mistake." It marked the end of whatever popularity Gingrich and the Republican right retained from the 1994 midterm election.

Given this history, Republican congressional leaders like House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell were tamping down expectations of a government shutdown. But it can't be ruled out.

During last year's midterm election campaign, the Republicans talked casually about slicing $100 billion from government spending already authorized for this fiscal year. Once in power in the House, the party leadership proposed cuts amounting to $30 billion. But a "backbench" revolt by Tea Party favorites among the new Republican representatives pushed that figure to $61 billion.

While actually boosting spending on the Pentagon, the original House Republican proposal includes cuts to hundreds of programs, from Head Start, job training and food stamps, as well as the ideologically driven elimination of aid to Planned Parenthood and deep cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency.

John Boehner justified his support for doubling the cuts he initially proposed with the excuse that "we're broke."

In truth, these cuts would have almost no impact on the federal deficit. And of course, they come from the same deficit "hawks" who championed extending the Bush-era tax cuts [to the rich], which add between $200 billion and $300 billion annually to the deficit over the two-year extension passed in December.

The idea that the "American people" support slash-and-burn policies coming from Washington is an even more dubious proposition. A Pew Center for People and the Press poll, released in early February, found the public split down the middle on the choice between reducing the deficit and spending on jobs. On 15 of 18 spending priorities, more Americans want to see funding increased rather than decreased. If anything, Americans want the government to spend more on essential programs for health and education than it is now.

But what the people actually want has no bearing on the debate in Washington, where politicians have already resolved that the next period will be one of fiscal austerity and government retrenchment. While Republicans posture for Tea Party cred, the Democrats are positioning themselves as the "responsible" stewards of austerity--still in favor of cuts, just not so deep.

For this reason, the White House and congressional Democrats denounced the Republicans' proposals. But they aren't standing firm against them. In fact, when the White House released its budget for fiscal year 2012 earlier this month, it tried to outdo the Republicans by proposing around $400 billion in cuts over five years, even reducing funding on a program that provides home heating assistance for the poor. "Our nation is in deep fiscal trouble and cutting spending is part of the solution," House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer said. "But we can't cut spending in a reckless, short-sighted way that mortgages our country's economic future."

With statements like this, along with the White House's embrace of austerity in its own budget proposal, it's clear that hardly anyone in the Washington elite will stand against cuts that will devastate hundreds of thousands of working-class people for whom the "Great Recession" is an ever-present reality.

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Most likely the whole budget drama is little more than political theater. The leaderships of both major parties, already agreed on the twin goals of cutting government spending for the poor and not raising taxes on the rich, are simply acting out for their respective constituencies as they arrive at a mutually acceptable figure for the final price tag.

Whatever draconian cuts get agreed to in the end, you can be sure that Democrats will pat themselves on the back for having resisted even worse. But in pursuing the austerity agenda, they will have needlessly prolonged the misery of millions.

Note: Lance Selfa is editor of the International Socialist Review
http://www.isreview.org/