Such wasteful expenditures as low income heating assistance will lose $2.5 billion, a 50% cut, along with Community Development block grants and the EPA. Two thirds of the more than $1 trillion will come from spending cuts and one-third from tax increases. The Wall Street Journal reports on clashes that will occur between the two capitalist parties over the difference between the Democratic and Republican proposals.
Clashes there will be, but these spats will have to do only with the level of cuts the working class will have to bear. The political wrangling is a squabble among thieves as they shift the burden of their economic crisis on to the backs of workers and the poor.
The Democrats are whining about how mean the Republicans are and that their proposed cuts to the Head Start program for low-income children are too severe. The Republican plan “Would cause 218,000 children to be dropped from the program.” the Democrats are saying. In the great game these two capitalist parties play, the Republicans come with the high figure and the Democrats cut it in half so only 109,000 children will be cut. The top officials of organized Labor support their Democratic friends offer and declare victory. It goes like this:
Republican Sen: “We propose a 25% cut in education spending.”
Democratic Sen in a most emphatic and militant tone, “Absolutely not, we demand justice and fairness, we propose a 15% cut in funds for education.”
Top Labor official: “Bravo, Bravo, victory at last, long live the Democratic Party”
As Obama wages war at the federal level, Jerry Brown, the former left/liberal ideologue from KPFA and now the Democratic governor of California, said last week that he didn’t believe in threatening or influencing the voters of the state. He said that because he has two options on the table for the workers and middle class of the state, he didn’t want to influence their vote. Then he went on to say that if we don’t vote to increase our taxes, terrible things will happen.
Brown, through the Legislative Analysts Office has made public what it will mean if we don’t vote to increase our taxes to accompany the $12.5 billion in cuts he proposed earlier to close the budget gap. We will be forced to cover a deficit caused by the mismanagement and plunder of our social wealth by him and his class colleagues; there are no other choices on the table from these people.
The added $13.5 billion will consist of a “$5.2 billion reduction in K-12 public school and community college programs.” According to the SF Chronicle. Another $2 billion will be cut from the University of California and Cal State University systems. These areas have already seen massive fee hikes but Brown proposes another 7% increase for UC and 10% for the CSU system. This politician supported by so-called leaders of workers’ organizations (the head of the California Labor Federation called Brown’s budget fair and balanced) will eliminate K through third grade class size limits as well as state funding for transporting students to school (this will no doubt be replaced by funding teenagers transportation to Afghanistan and other such exotic locales)
The Iraq invasion privatized that country’s oil industry by the bomb; they are now attempting to privatize public education in the US with a similar barrage of weaponry.
On top of all this Brown proposes cutting wages for those who provide in-home help for those that need it, (people whose wages are way to low as it is.) State workers are to receive a further 9% cut in wages and the state contribution to their health care will be cut 30%.
Legislative analyst, Matt Taylor points out that “Legal challenges and federal laws could block some of the options” .He doesn’t mention the Unions because the leaders of these potentially powerful institutions are on their team, agree in principal that their members, along with all workers, have to pay.
So Barak Obama from Washington and Jerry Brown form Sacramento are holding the US workers and the middle class hostage. The politicians in the two capitalist parties, after using taxpayer funds to bail out the bankers, dragging them and their system from the edge of the abyss, are now taking advantage of their crisis to wage a war of economic and social terrorism against workers. They are driving the elderly, the youth, the poor and especially people of color and women who are a disproportionate chunk of the poor population in to peonage. But let there be no mistake, the attacks are across the board, are widespread.
But these very state workers who are taking these big hits have huge organizations. The AFL-CIO’s California Teachers Federation represents about 120,000 educational employees in the state; the California Teachers Association of the NEA another 300,000. The California Labor Federation has two million workers affiliated to it; it’s LA arm about 800,000 and its San Francisco body, 100,00 or more. The complete capitulation of the leaders of these organizations to the capitalist agenda is criminal and one of the main reasons there has yet to be a major movement in opposition to these assaults.
The university of California has 100,000 employees and 6 Unions. Yet the fight against the savage attacks there has been left primarily to the students. As we stated in a blog yesterday, the Union officials are terrified of their own members becoming active because they basically agree with the employers’ arguments that we have to tighten our belts and their members oppose this and naturally want to keep what they have. They'll bus them to a protest and rapidly bus them back out of there but their involvement in their own defense is not required beyond that. Read more about the Unions and the UC system here
For those at the top of the Union movement, opposition to cuts is just a matter of degree. The Unions provide buses and fliers and other stuff and talk about fighting back but fighting back doesn’t include a program of demands that increase rather than decrease spending on education including their own members wages. And it certainly doesn’t include uniting the 100,000 or so workers in the UC system in a powerful force that can bring that system to a halt.
In 2006 we saw one million people out in the streets in opposition to the attacks on immigrant workers. This was a powerful beginning that has not spread to include the working class as a whole. Alice Walker once said, "The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any." This is a very true statement. In fact we are so conditioned to think we have no power that we don’t even consider giving it up.
But we do have power. We also have allies. The US capitalist class due to the passivity of the Labor leadership and their ability so far to suppress the anger within these organizations is feeling overconfident. But they should beware. The situation in the US is not that unlike Egypt with some obvious exceptions. But the anger at what is going on in this country is reaching boiling point and at some point in the not so distant future it is going to boil over.
We’ll see some activity then alright.
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