Mobilize to Stop Cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security
 
by Billy Wharton, co-chair, Socialist Party USA
 
On May 1, 2003 then President George W. Bush emerged from a fighter
jet on the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln to make
his famously absurd “mission accomplished” speech.  Today’s
announcement of an agreement on a budget deficit package provides
current President Barack Obama with his own “mission accomplished”
moment.  Much like that of Bush, Obama’s completed mission will lead
to mass suffering and more than a few deaths.  Bush’s victims were
Iraqis and the American soldiers sent to kill them.  Obama’s will be
poor, working class and elderly Americans cut off from vital social
programs as a result of budget cuts.
 
Since his election in 2008, Socialists have been clear about what the
Obama administration represented.  We often referred to him as a
“hedge-fund Democrat.”  This tag was laughed off by the Progressives
for Obama crowd as being over-the-top and out of touch with the
possibilities of the new Presidency.  However, like any good
hedge-fund operator, Obama has effectively managed risk for the
richest 5% of Americans and the banks and corporations who funded his
campaign.  Their main fear was that the mass unemployment and deep
poverty caused by the economic crisis of 2008, which they created,
would force the government to take on long-term relief efforts – like
an extension of anti-poverty programs and a public works project for
the unemployed.
 
The budget deficit announcement delivered by Obama is a “mission
accomplished” for his elite benefactors.  The welfare state will not
be extended.  The unemployed will not be put back to work.   In fact,
the existing anti-poverty programs such as Medicaid, Medicare and
Social Security are now targeted for $1.5 trillion in budget cuts by a
“Super Committee” made up of Democrats and Republicans.  These cuts
are sure to increase the already rising misery felt by poor and
working class people all over this country.  Wall Street corporations
might have returned to profitability, but, in poor and working class
neighborhoods, the economic crisis continues on and will be deepened
by further cuts.
 
The fact of the matter is that the source of the budget crisis is the
immense amount of money, nearly $1.3 trillion last year, spent on the
US Military and the sharp reductions in the taxation of the rich and
corporations.  Military spending has increased rapidly since World War
II as the American military expanded its presence into nearly 1,000
bases worldwide.  Recent military adventures in Iraq, Afghanistan and
Pakistan have sent these costs even higher – siphoning off desperately
needed public funds from social programs.
 
Simultaneously, elites and corporations have used the Democratic and
Republican parties as vehicles to reduce and, in some cases eliminate
entirely, the need to pay taxes.  Taxation on the highest earners has
declined from a rate of around 90% in the 1960’s to 35% percent today.
 Corporate tax rates have had a similar decline, from 50% in the 60s
to around 30% today, and Capital Gains taxes have been reduced from a
late 70s high of around 40% to current rates, close to 15%.  All of
this means that the rich and corporations have pocketed trillions of
dollars, while necessary state services are driven to the brink of
bankruptcy.
 
The soaring military costs and declining tax rates over the past few
decades were only a pretext for this moment.  These trends, in
addition to the defeat of the labor movement in the US, have left what
were once untouchable public support programs open for attack.  And
Obama was specifically selected as a candidate with the popular appeal
to carry out these cuts that aim at eventually eliminating Medicaid,
Medicare and Social Security regardless of the human suffering that
will be caused. This is the sick logic of neoliberalism brought to
life in a progressive garb.
 
The simple fact of all this is that it will take a revival of
Democratic Socialism in America to defend these programs.  Why
socialism?  It’s simple.  Socialism places the needs of human
development at the center of politics.  More concretely, we believe
that budgetary decisions like the ones being made behind closed doors
in Washington should be made in a democratic manner.  We aim to create
a system of participatory budgeting – where the vast majority of
people, instead of a just a few corporate-financed politicians, make
decisions on how public funds are spent.
 
Such a process would certainly build support for a Socialist plan for
immediately dealing with the current budget inequities.  We propose
cutting the military budget by 50% and creating a progressive taxation
system where the rich and the corporations that have swindled us for
generations are made to pay.  New revenues will be put to work to
build a solidarity economy that guarantees healthcare for all through
a socialized medical system, jobs for all through a full employment
economy and guarantees that the elderly will live with dignity through
a Social Security program that provides livable support.  We consider
these to be the basic building blocks of a human society – the
fundamentals of socialism.  Capitalism is the only thing preventing
this.
 
We therefore call for resistance to all of the cuts formulated by the
Democrats and Republicans and being delivered by President Obama.  No
cut to Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security is acceptable.  Poor and
working people all over country need to mobilize against these
proposals in order to express our democratic will and demand that the
rich pay for the crisis they created.  Once we are mobilized we will
not stop at just the defense of current programs.  We will demand that
the great wealth stolen from those who created it be returned to be
put to the use of improving human life all over the globe.  Doing so
will make Obama’s “mission accomplished” moment ever bit as hollow as
that of his predecessor.
 
***
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http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/03/201231995523614214.html

Aljazeera                                                                                                                           22 Mar 2012

Or should I say authoritarianism for everyone else. Since the terrorist attacks of 2001, the US has spent about $635bn to militarise the country's local police forces. It's ostensibly an effort to better prepare communities in case of another attack. But, as Stephan Salisbury reported recently, there has been a cultural transformation, too. "The truth is that virtually the entire apparatus of government has been mobilised and militarised right down to the university campus." When the state makes a fetish of security, as the US has, it becomes hard to tell the difference between acts of civil disobedience and terrorism.

So it's tempting to say two currents conspired to increasingly limit the freedom of individuals in the land of the free. One is the funnelling of wealth upward so that the top 10 per cent owns and controls half the wealth. The other is the organising of state violence to protect the oligarchy in case anyone gets wise to what's happening. Perhaps there's a third: the executing of state violence in the name of security.

These collided in an instant in November. New York City cops, under the orders of a billionaire mayor to clear out Zuccotti Park, suppressed the rights of thousands of Americans who had been protesting the oligarchy's power over their lives. Later on, it was revealed that the real estate firm that owned the park had previously taken more than $174.5 million in tax-payer subsidies to rebuild after September 11. Not only was the state reacting to the threat of collective action; it was defrauding the public of its contractual right to use the park after having paid for it.

Given all this, I sense the depth of Zinn's line about "the full-force of the capitalist state". Occupy protesters aren't just facing local police; they are facing an entire system bent on breaking dissent and protecting the status quo. And I sense this is why Eugene Debs became a radical after experiencing such political violence. How can you play by the rules when the 1 per cent writes, and keeps rewriting, the rules? The only way to fight back is to fight back against the entire system.

In 1918, Debs visited three socialists in jail for dodging the World War I draft. Afterward, he walked across the street to give an impromptu speech that enraptured onlookers for hours. Because of this speech, Debs was eventually found guilty of violating the Espionage Act, a deeply un-American set of laws that are still in effect (in fact, the Obama administration is using the laws against Bradley Manning, who leaked secrets to WikiLeaks). These laws are designed to crush criticism of the state. The irony of Debs' time may be the irony of ours: "They tell us we live in this great free republic; that our institutions are democratic; that we are a free and self-governing people," Debs said to his audience. "That is too much, even for a joke."

John Stoehr is the editor of the New Haven Advocate and a lecturer at Yale.