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democrats Cave in to Tea Party
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D
emocrats blew it. They
control the White House
and the Senate. Yet, it was
the Republican-controlled House
– which is itself increasingly con-
trolled by Tea Party zealots – that
defined the terms of deficit debate
and provided us with another
example of Democratic ineptness.
The last-minute deal between
President Obama and congression-
al leaders amounted to, in the
words of economist Paul
Kaufman, “raw extortion on the
part of a party that, after all, con-
trols one house of Congress.”
Writing in Monday’s New York
Times, Krugman said the deficit
deal amounts to “an abject surren-
der on the part of the president.
First, there will be big spending
cuts, with no increase in revenue.
Then a panel will make recom-
mendations for further deficit
reduction – and if these recom-
mendations aren’t accepted, there
will be more spending cuts.”
Krugman argued, “Republicans
will surely be emboldened by the
way Mr. Obama keeps folding in
the face of their threats. He surren-
dered last December, extending
the Bush tax cuts; he surrendered
in the spring when they threatened
to shut down the government; and
he has now surrendered on a grand
scale to the raw extortion over the
debt ceiling. Maybe it’s just me,
but I see a pattern here.”
Me, too.
From
the
beginning,
Republicans took control of the
debate.
The
Government
Accountability Office explains:
“The debt limit does not control or
limit the ability of the federal gov-
ernment to run deficits or incur
obligations. Rather, it is a limit on
the ability to pay obligations
T hE C urrY
r EPOrT
George E.
Curry
already incurred.”
According to the Congressional
Research Service, the debt ceiling
has been raised 74 times since
1962, including 18 times under
Ronald Reagan. Until now, neither
House Speaker John Boehner,
House Majority Leader Eric
Cantor nor Senate Majority
they don’t want Obama to spend
more, it’s within Congress’s
power to withhold that money.”
That wasn’t the only straight-
up Republican lie.
The
Republican
mantra
became, “We have a spending
problem, not an income prob-
lem.” Actually, we have both. It’s
true that federal spending this
current fiscal year, which ends
Sept. 30, is expected to equal
24.1 percent of the country’s gross
domestic product (GDP), the sec-
ond-highest percentage of GDP
since 1945.
It is also true federal revenues
are expected to be 14.8 percent of
GDP this year, the second- lowest
level since War II.
Republicans will surely be
emboldened by the way Mr. Obama
keeps folding in the face of their
threats
Leader Mitch McConnell objected
to lifting the debt ceiling.
Now that Barack Obama is pres-
ident, they have made it a major
issue. House Speaker John
Boehner, for example, asserted
that President Obama was seeking
a blank check.
“This is a straight-up lie. Not the
everyday, casual fudging that
politicians do, but a straight up
lie,” Adam Serwer wrote in the
Washington Post. “This isn’t a per-
fect metaphor, but not raising the
debt ceiling is more like refusing
to pay your credit card bill than it
is akin to asking for a blank check.
Congress appropriates funds; if
But the most conservative of
conservatives prefer to ignore that
reality. Letting the Bush taxes
expire would slash the deficit in
half, but that’s an item that
Republicans insisted was off the
negotiating table.
In his July 22 press conference,
Obama acknowledged he had been
exceedingly generous in his over-
tures to Republicans.
“Essentially, what we had
offered Speaker Boehner was over
a trillion dollars in cuts to discre-
tionary spending, both domestic
and defense,” Obama said. “We
then offered an additional $650
billion in cuts to entitlement pro-
grams – Medicare, Medicaid,
Social Security.”
Here’s the kicker: “We were
offering a deal that called for as
much discretionary savings as the
Gang of Six [a panel Democratic
and Republican lawmakers]. We
were calling for taxes that were
less than what the Gang of Six had
proposed.”
Boehner responded to Obama’s
gesture by ending the negotiations
and refusing to return Obama’s
phone calls. Therein lies the differ-
ence between Obama and
Boehner. The latter listens to his
base and then moves quickly in its
direction. Obama, on the other
hand, repeatedly boasts that he is
willing to ignore the wishes of his
base when attempting to strike a
deal with House conservatives.
“The president got the only thing
that was nonnegotiable from his
perspective: a big enough increase
in the debt limit to ensure he does-
n’t have a repeat of this fiasco dur-
ing the 2012 campaign, which
would make him look fatally
weak,” wrote Matt Miller, a senior
fellow at the Center for American
Progress.
In the wake of the deficit deal,
Obama has tried to put a happy
face on the ugly deal. The admin-
istration has put out a “fact sheet”
that claims the agreement, “ Stays
true to the President’s commit-
ment to shared sacrifice by pre-
venting the middle class, seniors
and those who are most vulnerable
from shouldering the burden of
deficit reduction. We’ve heard
similar talk for the past two years.
george e. Curry, former editor-
in-chief of emerge magazine and
the nnPa news Service.
Wealth Gap: The souls of Angry White Folk
T
he report recently released
by the Pew Research Center
that showed that the wealth
gap between white families on the
one hand, and African American
and Latino families on the other
was greater than at any time in the
last 25 years, caught many people
by surprise.
It should not
have. We have been witnessing an
expansion of this gap for some
time.
The so-called Great
Recession has exacerbated this
tendency.
Yet when I read this report, actu-
ally the first thing that came to
mind was a discussion I recently
had with white friends of
mine. They were telling me about
their son, a 20-something who has
been looking for work. He has
gotten into the frame of mind that
goes like this: white men have it
rough out there and, in fact, white
men face discrimination compared
with—hold onto your hat—Black
women. My friend, who is pro-
gressive, has had constant debates
with their son but to no avail. He
continues to believe that the decks
are stacked against white men.
So, first, I started wondering
what this young man must think
about
the
Pew
Center
report. How, I have wondered,
does this jibe with his sense that
white men are facing discrimina-
tion when clearly the facts demon-
Page 4 The Portland Skanner august 3, 2011
T RANS A FRICA
Bill
Fletcher Jr.
strate something very different? I
am sure that he will find a way to
rationalize it. The reason he will is
that it is actually rough out there
the introductions of new technolo-
gies; downsizing; and off-shoring
of jobs, but white people can no
longer assume that they are
immune or cushioned against the
full impact of economic down-
turns any more. The challenges to
white racial privilege and racist
discrimination by people of color
and their allies over the years has
meant that the automatic assump-
tion that, when all else fails peo-
ple of color will be there to soften
the blow, does not work the way
that it once did. Back during the
Great Depression, for instance,
White people can no longer assume
that they are immune or cushioned
against the full impact of economic
downturns any more
for young white men, but not
because of Black women, black
men, Latinos or anyone else. To
paraphrase an old saying, it’s the
system, dummy...
What my friend’s son is con-
fronting is the manner in which the
economy has been changing over
the last 30 years. Not only has the
economy reorganized, leading to
Black workers were often fired
from their jobs and replaced by
white workers, though the white
workers would be paid at the
lower salaries than Black workers
were making. These days it is
more difficult to pull this off.
So, what does this all
mean? Racist discrimination is
alive and well, but looks different
than it once did. Nevertheless, the
racial differential in treatment,
whether in employment, wealth,
education, etc., remains very much
a part of the fabric of U.S. socie-
ty. But the second piece is that the
reorganization of capitalism
means that many of the opportuni-
ties that whites believed that they
were entitled to have dried up. In
this situation many of these
whites, like my friend’s son, focus
on imaginary opponents—in this
case Black women—rather than
understanding that the system is
actually crushing them. It is anger
like his that helps to fuel Tea Party
movements, white nationalists and
others who desperately want to
believe that the American Dream
can be restored...for whites.
Sorry.
It won’t work that
way. The system is saying loud
and clear: Do not pass “Go”; do
not collect “$200”; go directly to
the unemployment line where you
stew and try to figure out how did
this happen because, after all, it
was not suppose to happen to
white folks...right?
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a Senior
Scholar with the institute for
Policy Studies, the immediate past
president of transafrica Forum,
and the co-author of “Solidarity
Divided.” he can be reached at
papaq54@hotmail.com.