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From Wisconsin to Washington, Budget Cuts Draw Battle Lines Against Public
It's remarkable how little the demonstrations in Wisconsin have to do with the budget battle that initially sparked it. The protesters today aren't talking about program cuts, but reinvigorating a sense of economic citizenship in an age when workers and democratic government are both under siege. Amid the chants and the picket signs is a new sense of where working-class families will draw the line when it comes to protecting certain public goods: education, labor rights, job security, and a solid social safety net.
Meanwhile in Washington, the same core values face a nationwide war of attrition against the public sector, labor protections, and education. From Wisconsin to the Hill, activists can trace a throughline between "belt tightening" in the state house and attacking big government in Congress. The issue is not so much deficits as it is the question of keeping the state from cannibalizing its public responsibilities.
Drawing the ideological battle lines, House Republicans have rolled out list of potential cuts for the remainder of the year that read like an epitaph for an asphyxiated government. The House plan isn't designed for political viability, given the power balance in the Senate; it's a statement of principles.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes that the proposed cuts for fiscal year 2011 have the nation's children firmly in the GOP's crosshairs.
Head Start, a critical program for low-income children who need an extra boost for their educational futures, would lose 15 percent from current funding levels. This is equivalent to roughly 157,000 children, in addition to 61,000 Head Start and Early Start slots that will evaporate once stimulus funding dries up. Kids would also lose hundreds of millions of dollars for special education, math and science programs, and literacy support for families.
And for those seeking to pursue a higher education, Republicans provide some enticing options: dropping out, taking on more debt, or just staying poor:
[I]n 2014 the total maximum award for a Pell Grant recipient would be... $1,525 below today’s maximum Pell Grant award of $5,550. The cut below the currently projected maximum award would grow to $2,090 (or 34 percent) in 2017.
These cuts would discourage many prospective low- and moderate-income students from starting college and make it much harder for those who do to continue their studies and graduate.
Then there are more cuts to prevent older adults from obtaining vocational training and employment services under the Workforce Investment Act. Apparently conservatives prefer to limit opportunities for chronically under- and unemployed Americans to try to enhance their skills and move onto a productive career, because then in a few months they can relish the act of cutting off their unemployment benefits.
The proposed cuts would not only limit Americans' ability to move up in the workforce but curtail their physical mobility as well. A $3.6 billion reduction in transportation spending could stifle new infrastructure development, disproportionately impact the poor and people of color, and indirectly roll back attempts to create more energy-efficient cities.
But why stop there? Other potential cuts would make it harder for working Americans even to stay put in their homes. How about stripping funds for public housing resources, community development projects, and subsidies for poor people to heat their homes (the White House also wants to slice into home heating assistance).
The National Women's Law Center highlights the cuts that would be most devastating to women and families. For instance, House Republicans propose destroying family planning funding under Title X. This would be a blow to crucial birth control services for low-income men and women and devastate programs for preventing teen pregnancy, “creating yet another barrier for young women in need of tools and resources to help them make healthy, responsible decisions about their health and lives.”
See a pattern here? Systematically erasing provisions aimed at keeping families together, helping households pull through hard times, and enabling the next generation of Americans to realize their educational aspirations.
The House Republicans are setting a template for similarly draconian measures in the 2012 budget debate, as well as state legislatures around the country, which face even worse fiscal constraints.
So the budget process is turning out to be not really about cutting spending. It's about disinvesting from hope. Workers in Wisconsin saw more than taxpayer dollars at stake as legislators tried to gut their schools, government agencies and union rights. And that's where they decided to draw the line.
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41 Comments so far
Show AllThe line must be drawn.
Buck those drones also are available in model plane sizes (re: the use in a Dallas/Houston? drug bust AP report.
The conservatives think that the 20th century was a mistake, and that if we go back to the year 1900 we can start over again. Maybe there really was a y2K apocalypse for the working class.
Unfortunately those conservatives include many Democrats.
Tell me about it. They'll even call us "Republicans masquerading as progressives". Even George Lakoff recently came clean. Check this out.
An excerpt from http://www.alternet.org/economy/149980
"
What is saddest of all is to see Democrats helping them.
Democrats help radical conservatives by accepting the deficit frame and arguing about what to cut. Even arguing against specific "cuts" is working within the conservative frame. What is the alternative? Pointing out what conservatives really want. Point out that there is plenty of money in America, and in Wisconsin. It is at the top. The disparity in financial assets is un-American - the top one percent has more financial assets than the bottom 95 percent. Middle class wages have been flat for 30 years, while the wealth has floated to the top. This fits the conservative way of life, but not the American way of life.
Democrats help conservatives by not shouting out loud over and over that it was conservative values that caused the global economic collapse: lack of regulation and a greed-is-good ethic.
Democrats also help conservatives by what a friend has called Democratic Communication Disorder. Republican conservatives have constructed a vast and effective communication system, with think tanks, framing experts, training institutes, a system of trained speakers, vast holdings of media, and booking agents. Eighty percent of the talking heads on tv are conservatives. Talk matters because language heard over and over changes brains. Democrats have not built the communication system they need, and many are relatively clueless about how to frame their deepest values and complex truths.
And Democrats help conservatives when they function as policy wonks - talking policy without communicating the moral values behind the policies. They help conservatives when they neglect to remind us that pensions are deferred payments for work done. "Benefits" are pay for work, not a handout. Pensions and benefits are arranged by contract. If there is not enough money for them, it is because the contracted funds have been taken by conservative officials and given to wealthy people and corporations instead of to the people who have earned them.
Democrats help conservatives when they use conservative words like "entitlements" instead of "earnings" and speak of government as providing "services" instead of "necessities."
"
We need 50 more Bernie Sanders in the Senate.
That and 218 like him in the House. Sanders isn't perfect but certainly tops it off these days and we can't afford to lose him.
50 Bernie Sanders in the Senate would man nothing if the same people were still in power, and they would be if all we did was elect 50 Bernie Sanders. The ruling class would, and could simply ignore whatever the Senate did.
It's a big mistake to continue calling fascist reactionaries 'conservatives'. They are not 'conservative'. Let's call them what they are every time we speak or write.
It doesn't matter what they "are," but rather what they do.
Democrats do many of the same things the Republicans do, or aid the Republicans, or roll over for the Republicans, but then are excused for that on the basis that they supposedly "are" something different than the Republicans.
It is an ongoing charade of "don't look at what I do, look at what I 'am'" - what a person is being whatever they claim to "believe." The resultant confusion permeates liberal and progressive circles.
As I said in another post, here is what we "are" - human beings, working class people who know they are, and leftists. Everything else is deception and distraction, for the purpose of liberal, progressive and Democratic leadership fooling everyone so they can have their cake and eat it too: claim to be "on our side" while actually hobnobbing with and helping the other side.
So, Madam DeFarge, is it time to get out the knitting needles?
The GOP has been taken over by radical right wing rabid slathering, drooling attack hyenas who want to convert the USA into an Ayn Randian dystopia which would make the robber barons of the gilded age green with envy.
You don't think the 175,000 state and local government workers in Wisconsin are "working class"? You think teachers are in some sort of elite "class"? Most state workers don't make appreciably more (if at all) than carpenters or factory workers. You think you have to work in a coal mine to qualify as "working class"? Get your head out of your ass and show some solidarity. These people are there for all of us.
Well I guess when people are making 8 bucks an hour everyone that makes 12 bucks an hour is "Elite".
The solution to some it seems is to ensure those people making 12 bucks an hour now make 8.
This is the message that the TRUE Elites ,that top one percent making BILLIONS a year want repeated.
Likeitornot is playing THEIR game.
It is very inspiring and encouraging to see the solidarity forming right here, and how clear it is now which side people are on. Thank you for speaking for the Union and the working class. All else is minor by comparison and can be worked out.
Gee, thanks likeitornot, with "friends" like you who needs the Koch brothers or Gov. Walker or Gov. Christie. Without unions there would have been no middle class in this country and none of the worker protections that we have taken for granted. Likeitornot smugly dismisses the importance of unions and seems to support the war on unions which has been going on since Reagan. Thanks for nothing.
You oppose the interests of the working class, you oppose the Union. This is about which side you are in, not about your "opinions" or "ideas"but rather into whose service your efforts are dedicated.
And no, you do not get to take any "middle" position on this. There is no such thing as supporting the Union some of the time and not other times, anymore than you would abandon your family if you got tired of them.
If you are in the service of the bosses and opposed to the workers, then you are not on our side and it does not matter how clever you may think your arguments are. Those days when this sort of confusion and double talk confused people as to which side they were on are over.
Worker solidarity is not "old tired ideologies and prejudices."
The only reason that you could say that "working class families are not in the same financial class with these people" is because the Union has been destroyed everywhere else.
A victory for organized workers anywhere is a victory for workers everywhere. Harm done to one is harm done to all. You are trying to confuse people and set one group of workers against another. That is not going to work any more, and it most certainly is not "the truth." It is a management lie, and it is a knife to the heart of all working class people - which includes you, I would guess.
What it takes to get people to protest.
For the last 20 years or so, over and over again people have been electing politicians who favor reducing taxes without cutting spending. When the politicians campaign, they make general statements that they are going to cut government waste without actually pointing to substantial program cuts. The people don't question the campaign rhetoric. For the last 20 years or so, as the national debt has grown, people haven't concerned themselves much because it didn't affect them. It is like the debt never has to be serviced or repaid and let's not talk about our children, to whom we are passing the debt. Now the budget cuts (in this case, a state budget) are "directly" affecting a significant block of people in Wisconsin and they can't ignore the problem so they are finally protesting in the streets and halls of Madison, WI. I hope the protesters can see the bigger picture of what is going on in this country and stay involved in democracy, in all its forms.
Walker gave 140 million in tax giveaways to corporations in January.
Now in Feb. he says there is a 133 million shortfall, and wants the little guy to pay for it.
Well duh! Corporatism at its worst.
Arrest Walker!
Does it surprise anyone there is hardly any mention of cutting the military budget? It has been reported the U.S. military is greater than all the rest of the world's military added together. We are going broke supporting our military. Can we be more sensible with it?
With what is going on in Wisconsin (the first of many states coming up) and the U.S. House budget cutters in Washington, it seems the country needs to come to some realization. Someone needs to pay taxes. Should corporations pay the taxes or the citizens? The Republicans of course think corporations need more and more tax cuts but have no way to replace the money they let the corporations keep so guess what? The citizens have to pay them. Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin reportedly granted millions of dollars in tax cuts to businesses within his first two months in office. Now reportedly there is a budget shortfall of curiously almost the same amount in tax cuts he gave to to the business community. So again, who is going to pay the taxes that support government? We didn't seem to have these problems when the tax rates were higher on business during the Reagon years but even he reduced them before he left office. Here is an example according to Forbes Magazine: General Electric, which “generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.”
Until the geniuses in Washington decide to go back to where business paid higher taxes we are all going to have to dig deeper into our pockets. Just remember, tax cuts help give corporations the money to give million dollar bonuses to their CEO's and we don't want to stop that now do we?
I am going to go out on a limb here but I am betting the corporations getting the generous tax cuts give substantial campaign donations to the U.S. representative who helped get them the tax cut. Just a guess.
"Someone needs to pay taxes."
Excellent comment. It's simple: raise taxes on the rich and corporations, cut military budget. This definitely has a trickle down effect on the states.
As to your last paragraph, Mr. Chomsky goes further and states that some of the corporate tax give-backs are directly related to raising the over $1 billion Obama is expected to need for the 2012 campaign. The politicians are doing an elaborate dance with the ultra-rich and everyone else loses in this twisted non-democratic system.
See US Uncut
http://www.usuncut.org/
We won't get very far until the 99% of the population who are losing ground in various ways under our current economic policies realize that we are all in this together. The protesting state forester at the Wisconsin Capitol is in the same boat economically as the guy on a ladder who cuts down your overhanging branches. They have much more in common with each other than either of them has in common with the top 1% income beneficiaries or the corporations. Their fates are intertwined. They need to work together or they are doomed. The oligarchy is executing a brilliant plan to keep us divided and fighting with each other while they steal our national wealth. Want to see our future if we don't work together? Go down to Mexico City, where the oligarchy has been in power for 100 years.
It is happening now.
Good for the workers in Wisconsin!
But what Chen does not tell you here is which side of the "line" Democrats and union officials are on. (We know which side the Republicans are on.)
In fact, union officials support the cuts in pay and benefits--so long as their own role and income from dues checkoff, and the salaries and the perks of the privileged bureaucracy, are maintained.
"AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka declared at Friday’s rally in Madison that the unions recognize and accept the economic reasons for cuts in state government. Who gave them that right? Trumka does not speak for workers struggling to get by on their existing salaries, under conditions of accelerating inflation, or facing the gutting of healthcare and pension plans. He speaks for the fifth column of highly paid officials who have transformed the unions into the enforcers of corporate and government demands for austerity and wage cutting. Marty Beil, head of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, said yesterday: “We are prepared to implement the financial concessions proposed to help bring our state's budget into balance, but … we will not—I repeat we will not—be denied our rights to collectively bargain.” This only begs the question, however: what is there to bargain over if one starts by agreeing to all the concessions?"
-Full support to Wisconsin workers!
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/pers-f19.shtml
So in this piece Chen hails the drawing of the line. But in the next piece will Chen then channel this struggle behind the perspective held by unions like the AFL-CIO and Democratic state legislators that circumvents this line?
What I see from the trenches Greg, is that the file of the rank and file of the unions are waking up to those very facts you are pointing out. The teachers etc started out with the WEAC talking points but as they got talking amongst themselves they realized they need to push beyond what Mary Bell has been trumpeting. I think WEAC staffers better stop playing the middle; they like Walker, will be seriously underestimating our solidarity and hoisting themselves by their own petard if they don't realign themselves to ALL the working classes interests.
"In a press conference Thursday night on Capitol Square, Wisconsin Education Association Council President Mary Bell said, “This is not about protecting our pay and our benefits. It is about protecting our right to collectively bargain.” Earlier this month Bell agreed to teacher evaluations based on student test scores and performance pay for 98,000 teachers across the state, winning the praise of Republican legislators."
“Mary Bell spoke two times yesterday. They always give her the mic to say how much they are fighting for teachers. What she didn’t say is that the Wisconsin Education Association just accepted merit pay.”
-Protestors in Madison denounce attack on public employees
http://wsws.org/articles/2011/feb2011/inte-f19.shtm
Mary Bell's approach sounds like the approach in Michelle Chen's piece here.
Instead of waiting for a realignment--why can't the rank and file unite independently of the union?
Thank you.
I like your thinking, sagebushphilosopher. Unfortunately I doubt very many young people today have even heard of A Tale of Two Cities. And so far, I haven't met any who have heard of 1984 or Brave New World.
I guess I don't need to join the well deserved slapdown of likeitornot. This is the usual modus operandi of divide and conquer employed by the true elites (the 1% who don't want just almost all of our national wealth but ALL of it). To criticize union workers for getting to have a living wage and a chance to send their kids to college is a miserable race to the bottom. And yes, some union leaders enrich themselves and betray their members, but union members are universally better off than nonunion workers and always have been. But when unions were strong, nonunion workers benefited as well. This was the only situation when a rising tide lifted all boats. In Wisconsin there are some who do realize that and are joining the fight even though not in a union.
I don't agree the Tea Partiers are fascists. They are totally deceived by the fascist Koch brothers financing their rebellion. I suspect in the long term this will be a shortlived movement, although it may accomplish it's purpose, the bringing down of what's left of our democracy.
Good to see you're still here, Kathy.
If you meet any more young people who haven't read 1984 I hope you will encourage them to read it. It's one of the most important books ever written, especially now with the surreal permanent war between Eurasia and Oceania taking place.
This is only part of a big picture where corporations & their lackeys in Congress plan to make this a society of elites & have nots. Unions are the last line of defense against this takeover,& are mainly responsible for Americans achieving the standard of living that existed in the 50's through the 70's. Reagan was the beginning of the end for unions, & set a course to destroy them & denigrate them as much as possible, & the GOP have done everything they can to turn the public against unions, & in this they have succeeded brilliantly. The people of this country ( if they had any intelligence) would be marching in the streets protesting the takeover of Congress & the Supreme Court by the Koch brothers, Rupert Murdoch & the other plutocrats on Wall Street who plan on turning the middle & lower classes into peasants . Instead, they revel in parading around with tea bags hanging from their hats protesting " death panels."
Screw the union bosses like Trumka and USA bosses like Obama who advocate compromise to benefit the powers that be and the corporations, rather than the livelihood of Americans.. That is the problem. A strike will not mean anything unless you remain STRONG and TAKE for and from the people who would drive you into the ground. Strikers should stand tall and NOT GIVE up anything- no compromise- of wages, benefits or anything else hard earned and with prior contractual agreement. Aren’t we all sick of compromise when is just means another screw job? Let those filthy corporations pay a tax to benefit all Wisconsin, (and in Michigan too) or get out of America and good riddance. We all need to boycott them.
So a governor finds it is easy to scapegoat and TAX public employees.. that is mostly the majority female employees-the teachers, secretaries? Nice. Discriminatory preference exempts police or fire from taxation- certainly not judges. Just like Wisconsin, Rick of Michigan has a problem with little old ladies.
Michigan’s new GOP Gov. Rick Snyder, in his budget proposal just released, wants to TAX retirement savings of (mostly older female) teachers 4%! The NO TAX GUY is taxing and he is the tax guy for little old ladies, who served the needs of families for most of their work lives by educating their children! Yes. That is how Snyder sees it. Rick is SICK! According to Snyder, it is these women who need to help Michigan! Scapegoat teachers to bear the brunt of the economic malpractice by elected politicians who mismanaged Michigan and ran it into the ground providing corporate privileges, failing to regulate for consumers and by outright sabotage of education and just about every other public space and all infrastructure. They irresponsibly gave so much away to the private interests that we are now in trouble. Rick has a plan with other egregious features too. Rick is sick. So is that governor of Wisconsin. They need to emulate Gov. Mark Dayton of Minnesota- a smart , honest guy who is taking care of his state, taxing the corporations to bring his state to normalcy.
On Snyder’s past business record leading the Gateway computer there is this:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2009/10/gateway_class_action.html
Amen. There is the voice of my Michigan. Union forever.
RAISE THE TAXES ON THE RICH FOR GOD"S SAKE!
pass it on.
What really irks me is that the GOP's answer is to attack the workers and the unions. This countries workers have been sold out. All of the manufacturing companies are gone and the United States Automobile Industry is dead. We may build cars in the United States but with foreign made parts. To top this we are spending a dillion dollars on Wars. Meanwhile the politicos get rich on lobbyist money. Oil, Oil. Oil and no alternatives in site and highways a wreck. We need to put this country back to work and stop giving our dollars to countries who hate us.
Lets also not forget the workers who have no rights, pensions or health care and get minimum wages if lucky. And like many foreign countries all of their citizens have health care. So far that has been a bust here. I do not see the Right or Left on the positive side of this.
All my life I have worked hard for what I have and am not happy where this country is heading. I support all workers who are attacked and are not treated with dignity.
Good luck to those in Wisconsin or the Middle East who are fighting for human rights against tyranny.
Peace
Well said. The people of America are treated with disdain and disrespect. Our quality of life is nonexistent because our tax dollars are not used with pride in and for our people. There is virtually no discussion of what American people need in their lives for quality of life. And no discussions of our right to it given we, not they, have paid for it.
We need to stop electing people to Congress who hate us ... that's one of the BIG LIES that the Rethugs have been telling about the Muslims in the Middle East ... they _don't_ hate Americans (or at least they didn't until we fucked up their countries).
What they hate is our government's policies and the destruction that they have caused, but they don't hate most Americans. They have the sense to realize that the Average American is being screwed by the government as much as their countries are. The problem is, Americans don't seem to be smart enough to figure that out.
_Maybe_ what's happening in Wisconsin will finally wake up Americans to their folly ... but I doubt it.
One of my favorite quotes:
Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on. ~ Winston Churchill
Aren't you one of us? You talk about "Americans" - workers - and "their" folly as though "they" were some group you didn't belong to.
Who is it that needs to wake up? Read through this thread, you may stumble on the truth.
I would not look to the chieftain of the British Empire for any wisdom about this.
"The House plan isn't designed for political viability, given the power balance in the Senate; it's a statement of principles."
It's not a statement of the principles under which the United States lived when I was young. When Eisenhower was president the government had monre to spend on infrastructure and education. We had great schools in the '50s and '60s.
Then Ronald Regan happened, and since then, the Republicans have deliberately turned our government into the one that Reagan claimed was our enemy. (It wasn't when Reagan said that.)
Why is it that voters are so STUPID as to elect people to government WHO WANT TO DESTROY THEIR LIVES??
Why do Republican'ts hate Americans?
As most readers have realized when there is a lack of balance in state government it gives the opportunity for one party to "ram" through their agenda. I don't want to have either political party have majority rule because that stifles debate. Sure, when you don't have the funds you should cut spending. But if you give tax cuts to business to pay them back for helping get you elected (Gov. Scott Walker) you don't go after working class people to pay for the shortfall.
Like poster "Michigan Woman" stated, Gov. Mark Dayton in Minnesota has the right idea. Tax not the small businesses but the large ones and richest in the state. Would it surprise anyone Gov. Dayton is proposing to INCREASE the education budget? And the budget shortfall in Minnesota is double that of Wisconsin. We need more governors like him. Read some of his ideas.
http://www.twincities.com/ci_17433223?nclick_check=1