Conservatives Have Too Much of President’s Attention

Obama Budget Proposal: Cuts Targeting Working Poor, Middle Class & Students

Not even two months after capitulating and signing tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans into law, President Obama proposes a budget to congress that assaults programs • assisting the working poor (in ten years, this will be most Americans), • helping the needy heat their homes, • expanding access to graduate-level education; Obama even goes as far as • undermining that type of community-based organizations that provided the president his start in Chicago.

Obama’s new budget is the first step in a plan to achieve $1.1 trillion in deficit reductions over the next decade. To be sure, these deficit reductions are necessary, but the President’s proposed reductions — averaging just over $100 billion each year — are achieved mainly by squeezing social programs for citizens in need, while rewarding the already overly rewarded.

While conservatives will bemoan the effort as not enough (or not mean enough!), it is the path they truly seek that Obama has chosen.

The better means to achieve the necessary savings over the next decade:

• Double the marginal tax rate on the wealthiest 1% of Americans
• Reduce the oversized military and its budget by 25%
• Charge defense fees to Europe, Japan, Korea and the Middle East for our military services
• Institute self-financing/taxing, emergency reserve funds for the financial, insurance, and mortgage industries
• Remove the cap to income taxed for Social Security and Medicare and index current levels to inflation

RESULTS:

• Deficit issue addressed, • fair taxation-to-benefit ratios established, • military right-sized and funded accordingly by need centers, and • both crises in Social Security and Medicare averted fairly and promptly.

Next… what else do we need to do today?