A Four-Point “Scorecard” for the Budget Talks

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/29-1



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End the sequestration cuts.

The so-called “sequester” must be ended immediately. That’s not an end point for negotiations, as the Republicans seem to believe. It’s a starting point for meaningful debate.

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Protect Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

No matter how many times the public tells its public officials otherwise through the polls, those officials keep insisting that a “moderate” viewpoint calls for cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. So let’s go over the numbers again, based on the most recent findings from Lake Research:

82 percent of all voters oppose Social Security cuts.

82 percent of all Republican voters oppose Social Security cuts.

So do 83 percent of Democrats and 78 percent of Independents.

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Protect those who are most in need.

Our current economic difficulties are the direct result of runaway wealth inequity, the loss of social mobility, and the excessive Wall Street risk-taking which capsized the economy in 2008. For this reason, it’s unforgivable to consider cutting programs for those who are most at risk are most in need.

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Stop giving tax breaks for sending American jobs overseas.

It should be a given that powerful corporations should pay their fair share of taxes. And yet corporate tax rates – the real rates they pay, not the ones on the books – are at or near a sixty year low. What makes that an even more bitter pill to swallow is that large corporations are getting tax breaks for sending jobs overseas. That has to stop – immediately.

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