Republicans, Democrats escalate budget-cutting campaign

[Hannah Bell]

On Monday, Republican House Speaker John Boehner addressed Wall Street executives and other business figures at the Economic Club of New York. He told the assembled group that the Republicans would insist on deep cuts as part of any vote to raise the debt ceiling...

“We should be talking about cuts of trillions, not just billions,” Boehner added. “And with the exception of tax hikes—which will destroy jobs—everything is on the table.” He said that Medicare should an element of any deal...Boehner repeatedly insisted that there could be no tax increases, saying that this would hurt “job creators.” He used the phrase “job creators” or a variant more than 10 times in the relatively short remarks to refer to corporate CEOs and Wall Street speculators who have presided over the economic collapse and the ongoing jobs crisis.

During the interview, Boehner made one statement that was as revealing as it was false. He declared, “We could take all of the money from the wealthy, and we would hardly make a dent in the deficit.” In fact, the combined wealth of just the richest 400 individuals in the US is $1.37 trillion, which of itself would go a long way to offsetting the trillions in cuts demanded by both Democrats and Republicans. The richest 1 percent of the population in the United States controls about $16 trillion, or nearly 40 percent of all household wealth. This figure is somewhat more than both the total gross domestic product of the country and the total US government debt (about $14 trillion).

The demand from Boehner that “trillions not just billions” be cut in federal spending is, in fact, supported by both the Democrats and Republicans. An aide to the congressman subsequently clarified that the demanded cuts could take place over a period of up to five years. The Treasury Department is proposing a $2 trillion increase in the debt, which would require a $2 trillion cut over five years. The Obama administration has proposed a deficit reduction plan that would cut $4 trillion over 10 years.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/budg-m11.shtml