Shamus Cooke: We Have Been Screwed by Obama's Debt Crisis Plan

The hidden objective of the "Debt Crisis Plan" was to strike the first blows against our national social safety net, without encountering massive resistance. Mission half-accomplished so far! Half accomplished because only half of the $2.5 billion in cuts have been decided on! The other half will be sent to a bi-partisan committee, where, according to the White House Fact Sheet: "the committee will consider responsible entitlement (Social Security and Medicare) and tax reform (cuts to entitlement programs). This means putting all the priorities of both parties on the table, including both entitlement reform (Social Security and Medicare, as well as Medicaid), and revenue-raising tax reform. If the committee fails to agree on the cuts, they would be automatically triggered, and Medicare would be targeted: "any cuts to Medicare would be capped and limited to the provider side." This means that fewer doctors would accept medicare patients, or they would provide fewer services to Medicare beneficiaries. When it comes to cutting Social Security and Medicare, the Democrats are Republicans, only trying to get their foot in the door. Nevertheless, the potential cuts will have a massive impact on the millions of Americans who depend on these vital services, and if these cuts are allowed to happen unopposed, the possibility of future, more dramatic cuts is certain. Equally bad is that the budget deal makes the unemployment situation even worse. In writing about the effect the cuts would have on unemployment, a Moody's analyst predicted that: "The deal announced last night calls for a yearly average of $240 billion in cuts over the next decade. Very roughly, that suggests the new plan would cost around 1.6 million jobs per year during that time. This noxious level of contempt for working people was the product of a manufactured crisis, with Democrats and Republicans playing along. "There has to be a crisis. Now, in reality,there is no crisis at all. In reality, raising the debt ceiling has been done for a hundred years automatically. There is no connection between raising the debt ceiling and arguing over tax policy! All of a sudden, Mr. Obama is going along with the charade of saying,"Wait a minute, let's create a crisis!"