While the problems that really need to be solved are:
The 25 million people who are unemployed or under employed.
Stopping the Wall Street looters
Ensuring economic security for everyone, especially Seniors and the poor
Guaranteed access to health care for all.
No, these things are not on the table. Obama is cracking the whip when it comes to cuts to the most vulnerable. More details are revealed in this new document:
$250 Billion in reimbursement rate cuts to Medicare Providers, which will exacerbate the problems Seniors already have with access to doctors. There is some problem with Medicare fraud which comes from some Doctor's billing processes. But the problems are not in Medicare reimbursements being too high. This is just an attack on Seniors.
$100 Billion in cuts to benefits for Seniors. This affects every person who reaches retirement age and also the disabled. Not only will Medicare benefits be reduced but the plan is to end the tax deduction for out of pocket medical costs.
Also cuts to Medicaid's Prevention and Public Health Trust Fund. This is a cut to programs that were created to prevent more costly care in the future. Go figure.
The Democrats also want to cut $5 Billion from Medicaid's "DME". This is everything from crutches to wheelchairs to catheter bags to the hospital beds that are often used by Hospice so patients can remain in their home for the last 6 months of their life. This equipment often keeps people out of Nursing Homes.
This is who Obama and the Democrats believe should pay for the deficit caused by 2,3,4... unnecessary wars and their tax cuts for the rich.
So, there are some organizations that call themselves Progressive Democrats who think this might not be the best way to get Democrats elected. So they have a plan to pressure their Senators to find another way. You guessed it, phone calls and e-mails. After all, it has worked so well in the past. They will make it easy for you to use their web site to beg and plead "don't do this". You would think they might think of another way. Haven't they noticed that thousands of people are trying to find creative ways to pressure the 1% who control both parties? Haven't they noticed that e-mails and phone calls are not on the agenda these days?
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2 comments:
I can't figure this post out, but I am still trying to.
I don't think it's fair to say that the Democrats "want" to make cuts. Maybe they can't imagine an alternative, maybe they have forgotten how to struggle, maybe the New Deal wing of the party is relatively weak in relationship to he business interests, maybe the relationship between the mass movement and the Democrats if off kilter---but this doesn't add up to wanting to make cuts.
And maybe the "they" here needs more definition since "the Democrats" represent a cross-section of this country that the Republicans do not. That cross-section includes most of labor, the 92% of African-Americans who support Obama, a majority of Latinos and a majority of women.
Is the source of the problem the Democrats, whoever they are? No. Is it not, instead, monopoly capital and the financialization of capital and the resultant economic crisis that has us fighting over cuts at all? If so, why not direct the fire there?
And think about this: it's true that the Occupy movement (in less than 60 days) changed the debate, but that change was incremental and the reaction has been massive nationwide police brutality. This should show us that it will take something much more pointed and politicized than Occupy to change this country, Democrats included. Given that slow pace of change we're living with, perhaps the Progressive Democrats are right and should be encouraged in what they're doing as part of a broader movement that patiently develops a dialectic of reform-protest-study.
People in the Salem-Portland area have two choices on Thursday: they can go to the Marion County Democrats meeting in Salem and discuss these issues and/or they can join the nationwide protests in Portland (previously mentioned in this blog). They aren't contradictory events. People who are serious about social change---the so-called "conscious element"---will be doing one or the other or both.
When we see masses of people pouring out to these events we will know that we're not in a period of slow social change. But masses aren't turning out yet and smaller, more patient steps are needed. It's not the time to make the Democrats the main object of criticism or to use ultra-left rhetoric or to raise ultra-left slogans: that isolates the left just when it's needed to move the center leftwards.
The President and the Super Committee want to make these cuts. Most of them are in the American Jobs Act that is being pushed by the Democratic Party and now this document shows there is unanimity among Democrats on the Super Committee that they will not let the Bush/Obama tax cuts for the rich just expire.
It is the right thing to do to denounce all of them..But then they will affect my life greatly. Therefore I speak out in condemnation against those who will perpetrate them and the party which is proposing them. I am not sitting back, I am fighting back. I want Democrats who will listen to walk out and fight back..
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