As a retired Tennessean, I was relieved about the Fiscal Cliff deal that left my Social Security and Medicare in place. I'm still an unhappy camper, though, because the majority of our delegation in both House and Senate seems determined to hold these benefits - and everything else a lower income Tennessean needs - hostage to the debt ceiling. Let's be clear about one thing: lawmakers in both parties routinely raised the debt ceiling 89 times without precondition between 1939 and 2010. As the President keeps pointing out, the debt ceiling is raised to pay the bills we already owe, spending previously authorized by Congress. Ms. Maddow is correct.
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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}Let me say this as plainly as I can: congressional Republicans are threatening to hurt Americans on purpose.
Before they will pay the country's bills, Repbulicans plan to insist on massive cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Many in this country depend on these programs, but Republicans don't care.
I will never forget watching Representative Dianne Black making a PowerPoint presentation on the debt. She noted that 50% of people don't pay federal income tax. "If 50% of the people aren't pulling, the wagon's not going to get very far." Apparently she doesn't count Bank of America, Citi, Exxon, and, some years, Mitt Romney, who don't pony up. I was appalled that she didn't seem to notice that, if 50% of Americans are not paying income tax, that means they barely have enough to live on themselves. Most of our Congressional delegation just plain doesn't care.
Senator Bernie Sanders laid out the truth recently in Huffington Post:
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mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}My Republican colleagues say that the deficits are a spending problem, not a revenue problem. What these deficit-hawk hypocrites won't talk about is their spending. They won't discuss what they did to dig the country into this $1 trillion deep deficit hole. They waged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq without paying for them. They gave away huge tax breaks for the rich. They squandered taxpayer dollars on the pharmaceutical industry by making it illegal to let Medicare bargain for lower drug prices. They also rescinded financial regulations that enabled Wall Street to operate like a gambling casino, leading to a severe recession that eroded tax revenue and left more than 14 percent of American workers unemployed or underemployed.
Now, despite the deficits their policies helped to create and despite the enormous suffering which exists in our society, the Republicans want to cut Social Security, veterans' programs, Medicare, Medicaid, education, nutrition programs, and virtually every program which benefits low- and moderate-income Americans.
Our own Senator Corker seems to resent even the temporary relief he felt obliged to vote for.
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“I looked at the policy of where we were going to be if we didn’t pass it, or where we would be if we did. While it was like eating a you-know-what sandwich to vote for this, to me it was a rite of passage.”
With representation like this, what can poor Tennesseans hope for?
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