Obama's Fiscal Commission: Republicans and Democrats teaming up to attack workers and the poor

Looks like they hate what they're doing, doesn't it?

I seem to remember some sort of commission or panel that former president Ronald Reagan, a one time B actor and TV spokesperson for V8, the tomato drink set up to deal with poverty. I am certain it was him but it doesn’t really matter a all these representatives of the corporations have the same modus operandi.

What struck me was that there weren’t any poor people on it. But then why would they put poor people on a commission set up to deal with poverty? Poor people would know what the problems were and what should be done to solve them. Wouldn’t want that would we?

Barak Obama has set up a commission too; the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. The purpose of this committee is to “Address our nation's fiscal challenges” the commission’s website tells us. Specifically, we are told, “The Commission shall propose recommendations designed to balance the budget, excluding interest payments on the debt, by 2015. In addition, the Commission shall propose recommendations that meaningfully improve the long-run fiscal outlook, including changes to address the growth of entitlement spending and the gap between the projected revenues and expenditures of the Federal Government.”

Native American Poverty in the US

The joint chairs of the commission are Alan Simpson, former Republican Senator from Wyoming; and Erskine Bowles, Chief of Staff to President Clinton. The rest of the commission is composed of members of Congress except for, David Cote, Chairman and CEO, Honeywell International and Ann Fudge, Former CEO of Young & Rubicam. The economist and former Director of the Office of Management & Budget, Alice Rivlin is on it as well. And last but not least, Andy Stern, the trusted representative of capitalism in the trade Union movement when he was President of SEIU sits on the panel/

So when it comes to figuring out how to close the gap between the nation’s revenues and expenses or to “Address our nation's fiscal challenges” workers, the poor, the disabled, children and some of the most vulnerable among us like undocumented workers have no voice. The two chairpersons have published their recommendations. They want to cut $4.1trillion from the budget deficit by 2020 with “sweeping changes” to the tax system they say will entail lowering taxes for “citizens and corporations” and moving the US to a system of taxation, eliminating levies on foreign income. The first thing we need to understand is that whenever they have introduced sweeping measures to change the tax system, our taxes in general have always risen overall while the corporations always seem to find the loopholes. *

They recommend higher gas taxes, eliminating the mortgage interest tax credit and charitable giving deductions. Sure, they argue that the “pain” will be spread around and exemptions on “newly issued” state and municipal bonds, and subsidies for agriculture and the oil and gas industries will be eliminated. But, we know that the rich will find ways around these restriction, they always do.

The new plan recommends raising the retirement age from 66 to 68, would cut $400bn from government healthcare programs like Medicare through 2020 and 200,000 federal jobs or 10 per cent of that workforce would be cut along with a three-year salary freeze for civilian government employees. One sentence in the commission's statement of purpose tells all; they include eliminating expenditures on health care but the interest on debt is "excluded" it is a no no.

The principal drivers of the deficit have been the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US government’s foreign policy in general, and Bush’s tax cuts to the wealthy. The financial crisis has added trillions of dollars in debt that Americans will have to pay for years to come. The current national debt is approx. $14 trillion. The crisis of the capitalist system is what causes them to destroy social services and living standards that took a century to win. This crisis is not of our making but their fiscal commission's proposal will ensure we pay for it.


“The moment of truth " is upon the nation the report from the two chairmen of the committee exclaims. How generous these bourgeois are. David Cote, the Honeywell CEO believes the pain has to be inflicted because the baby boomer generation “he is part of” (ha!), would “crush the system.” ** and supports the attacks on social security. Cote’s Total Compensation for the year is $2.21 million and his 5-Year Compensation total is $63.69 million according to Forbes. Honeywell, incidentally, spent 3.2 million in contributions to candidates in the 2009-2010 period and is the biggest corporate donor in Washington. Not surprisingly, the corporation has received nearly $13 billion in federal contracts, according to the New York Times.

Dick Durbin, another commission member and liberal Democrat despite once accusing the banks of creating the financial crisis of 2007–2010 and claiming their lobbyists “owned” Washington says that raising the retirement age “is acceptable to me”. “Acceptable” to a lawyer means one thing, to a retail clerk, construction worker or workers in the meat packing industries it is another. Thanks Dick.

Andy Stern, the Labor Lieutenant of Capital on the commission, does his usual song and dance act saying, according to the WSJ that he will “offer his own deficit plan but that didn’t mean he would vote against the panel’s version.”

The left liberal voice on the commission, Democrat, Jan Schakowsky was the only member of the panel who said she would vote against the proposal. Taking the traditional Democratic liberal position she argues that that the cuts are “too severe and would punish old people.” They will have catastrophic effects on women, children, the poorest among us, especially people of color and undocumented workers but it is not an accident that Rep. Schakowsky mentions the elderly, who will indeed be affected very negatively, but they tend to vote don’ they.

Richard Trumka, the AFL-CIO president said on October 26th 1995, “While we are always willing to negotiate as equals, the era of union busting, contract trashing and strike breaking is at an end. Today, we say that when you pick a fight with any of us, you pick a fight with all of us! And that when you push us, we will push back.” That was during the first contested election for the presidency of the AFL-CIO in 100 years which would explain it, He calls on this panel of millionaires and their political flunkies to vote against the commission chair’s proposal and supports a Keynesian alternative put forward by the Economic Policy Institute; increased infrastructure spending for job creation and funding it by “targeting those in society with the highest incomes for revenue increases”.

He is appealing to the very same friends in the Democratic Party that have shown very clearly that they are a political party that defends the interests of the banks and corporations. The best they offer is slightly less cuts which is what will happen as this budget process continues.

Tent cities are springing up all over the US

It is right for us to demand what we need, massive infrastructure spending, a $15 an hour minimum wage as we have stated before, a shorter workweek, free health care, education and other rights that would be provided in a “civilized” society. An inherently racist justice system and incarceration rate will continue with the cuts these thugs are instituting to make their system more “competitive” and therefore profitable. And it is right to point out that the rich must pay, but neither of the two capitalist parties will make them.

We must take Trumka’s election rhetoric as true, an attack on any worker is an attack on all of us, whether it is here in the US or in other countries. But it is necessary to build our own political alternative to the twin parties of capital, or better yet, the capitalist party with two wings to it. We need  a party of working people based on our organizations and communities. I was delegate to the California Labor Federation’s convention in 1994 and introduced a resolution for a Labor Party that then Executive Secretary Jack Henning felt compelled to speak on as he opposed it. He remarked:


"The two party system can't give relief because capitalism in large finances both parties. In one way or another. We may say it finances the Republican Party more. But have you ever known Democrats en masse to turn down the enticements of capitalism? "There should originate, in the leadership of the AFL-CIO, a call to the unions for the only answer that is noble: global unionism is the answer to global capitalism. "We were never meant to be beggars at the table of wealth. We were never meant to be the apostles of labor cannibalism on the world stage. We were meant for a higher destiny. We were never meant to be the lieutenants of capitalism. We were never meant to be the pall bearers of the workers of the world."

Similar rhetoric to Trumka as Henning, like all of them, was an obstacle to the development of this alternative, afraid as they are of where it will lead. And they have become more than “pall bearers of the workers of the world”, at this level, they cooperate in the slaughter.

The US capitalist class is forced by the system to shift their crisis on to the backs of the working class and poor despite the concerns they have at the scenes of rebellion among workers, but the youth in particular in Europe. All their serious journals, those where they talk to each other about their system and how best to govern it, all agree that they must wage war on workers despite the risks. We commented on the very revealing article in the last issue of Foreign affairs magazine and recommend reading it.

We have not had a significant mass movement in this country since the civil rights movement of the fifties and sixties and some have lost all hope. But the history of the US working class is a militant rich history, from the great struggles to build the Union movement in the 19th century and the 1930’s, to the civil rights movement of the 1950s that had powerful global repercussions. Despite their historic portrayals of slaves as passive and the native population as unable to resist, revolt is ever present in the US history despite the power and advantages that the enemy possesses.  Not force is more powerful than the united power of workers in action and conscious of our goals. As is always the case, our youth will play a leading role in the struggles ahead.

There are reasons to be optimistic.

* See: America: Who Pays the Taxes by Donald Barlet and James Steele
** Wall Street Journal, 12-2-10