The “Fiscal Cliff” Hoax

[Ghost Dog]

26. These are the policies that are now required (parsing Borosage):

· Create Jobs - Putting people back to work does more to reduce deficits than any other factor. That requires more federal spending now, preferably in areas vital to the economy, like modernizing our infrastructure and keeping teachers on the job. Once the economy is growing and people are working, the deficit will come down.

· Continue Healthcare Reform - The projected increase in healthcare costs—through Medicare, Medicaid, children’s and veterans’ healthcare—drive long-term deficits. The costs of Medicare and other public healthcare programs are rising more slowly than private healthcare, but even so, in the long term they are unaffordable. As economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research has pointed out, if per capita US healthcare spending were comparable to what other industrialized countries spend (with better results), we would be projecting budget surpluses as far as the eye could see. The solution requires challenging the predatory oligopolies—the insurance companies, drug companies and hospital complexes—that profit from high costs. Obamacare began that process; Medicare costs have begun to rise more slowly. The sensible solution to our long-term debt problem is continued healthcare reform, not cuts in basic security for Americans.

· Demand that Wall Street pay for the damage it caused - For example: our debt burden nearly doubled because Wall Street’s excesses blew up the economy and drove us into the deepest recession in seventy-five years.

· Impose higher tax rates on millionaires and billionaires - We are witnessing the worst inequality since the Gilded Age. The top 1 percent of taxpayers pocket more income each year than the bottom 40 percent, and they own more wealth than 90 percent of Americans. Yet their tax rates are near the lowest in post–World War II history.

· Enforce higher taxes on corporations and a clampdown on overseas tax havens - Lower rates, corporate loopholes, offshore tax havens and transfer pricing have reduced the corporate share of federal tax revenues consistently since the 1950s.

· Cut Military Spending - The military budget has doubled over the past decade, now exceeding what it was, in comparable dollars, at the height of the cold war.

· Establish a Different Basis for Growth - Investments now in areas vital to our future and a fundamental change of course. - ···

··· Revive Domestic Manufacturing - and thus reduce the destabilizing trade deficits that have contributed to the global crisis.

··· Implement an Industrial Policy - designed to help the United States lead the new global green revolution.

··· Renovate Infrastructure- to withstand the extreme weather that is already upon us .

··· Reform Public Education - Universal preschool, small classes in the early years, greater rewards and respect for teachers, after-school programs, affordable college and advanced training.

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Based on the following article: http://www.thenation.com/article/171266/grand-bargain-fiscal-cliff-could-be-grand-betrayal#

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GD

Many thanks for the OP, as always, Time for change.