The deadline for the bipartisan congressional supercommittee to produce a deficit reduction plan of at least $1.2 trillion is just 18 days away. Yet the committee, formed under the law that raised the debt ceiling this summer, is apparently no closer to an agreement than it was when it began work. This isn’t the Democrats’ fault. The blame for lack of progress on deficit reduction lies solely with Republicans.
The six Democrats on the 12-member panel have proposed a hard-to-swallow $3.2 trillion compromise plan that would whack $2 trillion off the deficit through deeply hurtful cuts in social spending and entitlements over the next decade, while securing just $1.2 trillion in new tax revenue in that period.
But Republicans refuse to compromise. Their plan calls only for spending cuts. To make that point more strongly, 33 Republican senators signed a letter sent Thursday to the panel demanding “no net tax increases” in any deficit reduction agreement, never mind that it was the needless George W. Bush tax cuts (and two wars on borrowed money) that began turning the federal budget from surpluses to deep deficits a decade ago. And a few GOP senators have began crafting legislation that would exempt the Pentagon from the across-the-board cuts that are supposed to occur if the supercommittee fails to produce a bipartisan deficit reduction plan.
The cuts Republicans propose are mainly in hard-earned entitlements like Social Security and Medicare. But they would slash funding for most federal agencies and a broad array of other vital social programs. Their refusal to consider tax increases is grossly unfair to the huge majority of taxpayers and families who pay much more in taxes, as a proportion of their disposal income and often as a matter of higher effective tax rates, than do the super-wealthy individuals and corporations that fail to pay a fair share.
The hardened GOP position against letting the Bush tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy expire, as they were designed to do in the legislation that Republicans passed in 2001 and 2003, makes a mockery of tax equity for the 99 percent of Americans that earn less than $1 million a year. It is that point alone that is driving the Occupy Wall Street movement to promote economic justice for the other 99 percent of Americans.