Facts that expose right-wing Republicans for what they really are (re: "fiscal cliff")

[SarahM32]

During President Obama's first term and even after he won a second term convincingly, every time the American economy has approached a so-called "fiscal cliff," Republicans have insisted that there must be cuts in "spending" and "Entitlements" like Social Security.

By December 2012 they finally had to admit that there must be a significant increase in revenue, but even then they still insist that along with that there must be cuts in social services.

The amazing thing about it is that the Republicans and "Tea Party" members have been so vehement and so successfully misleading about it, that even most Democrats and most media pundits agree that revenue increases must be accompanied by cuts in social services and "Entitlements."

That, however, is simply not true. In fact, that would be grossly unfair.

Consider that during the last 30 years the wealth of the nation has been redistributed so that the wealthiest 20 percent of the population now own 95 percent of the total financial wealth of the nation, while 80 percent of the population now owns only 5 percent of it.

Now also consider that during that same period of time, while the wealthiest few have been enabled to get incredibly richer, everyone else has become less financially secure, the middle class population has shrunk, more and more people fall into the working poor population which is rapidly growing, and more and more people fall into poverty, are hungry, and even homeless.

In fact, 20 percent of American children live in poverty, because while the wealthiest few get richer, the median (average) household income keeps falling. The incomes of the richest 20 percent of the population grew by 30 percent during the last two decades while the incomes of the lowest paid 20 percent of us declined by more than 20 percent in the same time period, and the buying power of the minimum wage declined significantly.

Politicians may want you to simply forget or ignore all that. But we cannot. We need to be sane, reasonable, honest, and fair.

We need to have sufficient revenue to make necessary investments in our people and in our country.

Republicans try to label it as "spending" to fool you, but they are wrong. We need to make investments, now more than ever.

Furthermore, to cut social services and Social Security would be a crime. And the only "Entitlements" we need to cut are those those that have been going to the wealthiest few, since we have entitled them to pay far less than their fair share of taxes and take far too much out of the national treasury in tax loopholes, deductions, shelters, havens, subsidies and other "welfare for the rich" that we have been allowing them to take.

(Quoted from the beginning of an article on The American Economy: Why It's Broken, And How We Can Fix It -- as revised 12-11-2012)