THE National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare says the following about Obama’s debt deal that savages the poor and leaves the rich well alone.
‘For too long, middle-class Americans and their families have been held hostage while anti-tax crusaders threaten American default unless vital programmes, like Social Security and Medicare, are slashed.
‘Unfortunately under this debt deal, those programmes will still be under attack – this time by a newly-created ‘Super Committee’ of just 12 members of Congress tasked to cut programmes by $1.5 trillion dollars. This committee plan will be fast-tracked to force it through Congress with no amendments allowed and little time for debate.
‘Americans of all ages and political persuasions know that Social Security and Medicare have not caused this economic crisis and do not support cutting these programmes to pay down the debt. Yet, Washington continues to use these vital programmes, and the Americans they serve, as bargaining chips in a quest to balance the budget on the backs of working class Americans and their families.
‘Our work is clearly cut out for us. The House Speaker has said he will appoint only ‘Super Committee’ members opposed to revenue increases. Leaving the debate right where we started . . . 100% benefit cuts and 0% revenue . . . except this time, the proposal will bypass the normal Congressional process. That makes it even easier to force middle-class benefit cuts to pay for billionaire tax breaks and corporate loopholes. This is no way to run a country. And the over three million members and supporters of the National Committee will continue to deliver that message loud and clear . . .’
The verdict of international capital on the deal was a huge sell-off of shares, and yet another increase in the price of gold, now above $1,664 an ounce, as banks and other lenders trembled at the further weakening of the US dollar, and that its interpenetrating with the financial crisis of the eurozone, could only lead to a greater financial disaster and a worldwide slump.
China also piled pressure on America, warning that ‘tortured efforts’ to raise the US limit on borrowing had failed to defuse Washington’s ‘debt bomb’, stating that China would further diversify its holdings away from the dollar.
China has the world’s biggest foreign exchange reserves of around $3.20 trillion and is the largest holder of US Treasuries.
The Russian leader Putin publicly called the US a parasite that lived off the back of the planet while admitting that Russia and China held billions of dollars of US debt.
The Obama deal raises the debt limit by up to $2.4tn (£1.5tn) from $14.3tn, and makes savings of at least $2.1tn in 10 years.
It will also establish, in November, a 12-member, bipartisan House-Senate committee charged with producing up to $1.5tn of additional deficit cuts over a decade, its prime target being Medicaid and Medicare.
By Christmas, Congress has to vote on the committee’s plan – with no amendments allowed.
The Obama deal has left millions of workers and the majority of the middle class angry with President Obama’s tame surrender to the Republican Tea Party freedom fighters for the rich.
Savage cuts will leave the trade unions, the youth and the elderly with little option but to defend their gains and break with the Democrats.
The trade unions must now force their leaders to make this break, and to form a Labour Party that will set out to expropriate the big US bosses and bankers, to make them pay for the crisis of their own making.
A section of the International Committee of the Fourth International must be built in the USA to lead the struggle for the foundation of a Labour Party to take the US working class forward, and also to organise the struggle for the US socialist revolution. The present world crisis of the capitalist system has placed this major issue firmly at the top of its agenda.
