These three programs are the most important contributions to the 20th century US of A and progressives will be calling, petitioning, demonstrating, tweeting, blogging, interviewing, filming and fighting for facts. Those things have nothing to do with the deficit. The defense spending and the Bush tax cuts due to end in December are where the money needs to come from, not on the backs of the most vulnerable and the middle class.
How is this related to our local issues? Above all, Social Security checks are a major part of any community's steady income during this recession and this is especially true with the numbers of Baby Boomers going into retirement now. Regardless of our local economy's ups and downs, the SS checks are being used each and every week all over town. Medicare and Medicade are the same story for our local economy and especially our healthcare professionals, pharmacies and Scripps hospital.
More from NYT economist Paul Krugman with some good excerpts here.
[ . . . ] Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a “grand bargain” on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory.
In saying this, I don’t mean to minimize the very real economic dangers posed by the so-called fiscal cliff that is looming at the end of this year if the two parties can’t reach a deal. Both the Bush-era tax cuts and the Obama administration’s payroll tax cut are set to expire, even as automatic spending cuts in defense and elsewhere kick in thanks to the deal struck after the 2011 confrontation over the debt ceiling. And the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession.
Nobody wants to see that happen. Yet it may happen all the same, and Mr. Obama has to be willing to let it happen if necessary. [ . . . ]
It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain.
[ . . . ] Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent.
Most of all, standing up to hostage-taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system.
So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.
