The Budget Debate = Public Financing

Without the influence of big business, would the budget debate have been anything near as disastrous as it was?  Of course not.

First, my usual rant about what a weak and terrible negotiator President Obama is.  He starts negotiations by preemptively giving away over 30 billion in cuts to social programs, including heating assistance to the poor, and Pell Grants to university students.  Then a few more billion here, and a few more billion there, and the Democratic leadership put about 40 billion in cuts on the table.

Republicans scooped that 40 billion off the table, and said "let's negotiate."  They demanded another 32 billion, and Obama and Reid, with their masterful negotiating skills, gave them 33.  They have hemmed and hawed, and chiseled a few more billion out of the pathetic Democratic leadership.  Total cuts from social programs, that create pain for for middle and working class Americans (let alone the poor and elderly), almost 80 billion.  Health and human services, more education, some health care, and across the board cuts for many federal agencies.  Pain for most Americans.

And it's all bullshit.  All a Vaudeville theatre act crossed with reality TV - a fake drama with lots of chest pounding and poop throwing. A real debate about spending would have included Wall Street, Wars, big oil subsidies and the recent tax cut for the top 2%. We, the average folks, get pounded economically, and have our civil liberties eroded.  The corporate elite are making out like bandits - because they are robbing us.

We're fucked, they are swimming in gravy.  A real debate about deficits would have included that gravy, but it didn't.

Take the subsidies for big oil.  Four BILLION dollars per year for American oil companies.  Now, the top five American oil companies made 79 BILLION dollars in PROFIT for 2010.  The largest, Exxon Mobile, paid NO TAXES in 2009.  Now, put that 4 billion back in the government coffers and they still made 74 BILLION!  And, we could heat the homes of poor folks, and send some of their kids to college.  Cancel that tax credit for a decade, and you find 40 billion in the couch cushions - half of the painful cuts that will effect most Americans.

Oil subsidies were hardly mentioned. Congress is perfectly willing to let poor people freeze, starve (400+ million was proposedly cut from WIC) and go uneducated; but will not entertain a few percent less profit for big oil. Give a little credit to the President here, he at least brought it up. But there was NO FIGHT on this issue from Democrats.

Defense? The Pentagon's annual budget is 1.5 TRILLION dollars.  Fuck! That is a load of money. Any big cuts there in this debate? Nope. Gates and Mullen have recommended some trimming, but I have not heard that any of it has come through in negotiations.

We have military bases in over 100 countries around the world. We are currently involved in three wars (counting Libya), all unpopular with the American people. We spend more on our military than the next 10 largest industrialized military powers COMBINED - and this includes China, Russia and anyone in Europe. Not part of the discussion.

Take food out of the mouths of poor families...from infants and kids - but not from oil companies or military contractors.  Or bankers.

We have opened the loading dock doors of the Treasury to the nation's large banks. They get to (figuratively) back trucks up to the doors and load money in at near 0%, over a TRILLION dollars so far. It is free money to use. We also bailed them out to the tune of billions, and then they paid us back with our own money - the small business fund. We could sure use those billions now - why not go and get it from them. And, how about spreading a "free" trillion dollars around the regular economy? A lot more people would be hired, and a lot more revenue would come in.

Oh...but that would not result in a massive bonus for a CEO.

And therein lies the problem. Our leaders are bought, totally and completely.

This budget battle shows all too starkly how our political leaders are not the least bit serious about governing a country. They are borrowing 40% of the money they spend, and the spending is massive. The only reason that any other nation keeps lending to us is that they see how low our tax rates are, and figure that we will soon raise taxes and pay them back. Woe be us when they catch on to how fucked up our politics really are.

This 80 billion in cuts that hurt working families balances the budget for less than 20 days. They could raise revenue, but they are instead planning to rob us blind by taking that money from Social Security and Medicare. They are doing it now. And in the states, they are taking our pensions and our public school budgets while the top 2% get more tax cuts.

They, the Republicans and the Democrats, are cogs in a money laundering machine - our money. Corporations have squeezed the productivity out of the American people to the point of pain, and now they are telling their paid servants, our elected officials, to clean out all the shelves of the vault before they move on like locusts to the next nation (watch out, China).

Obama will not help us, nor will Democratic leaders, nor the Democratic party because they are helping the Republicans hold the robber's sack. Yes, they are better than Republicans, but that will not help us when we are tied to chairs with gags in our mouths as the robber barons take the last pennies, and set the house on fire as they leave. I now believe that it is time for a constitutional amendment - an amendment that takes the private money out of politics.

Without an amendment to the Constitution, the five right-wing ideologues on the Supreme Court would strike down a campaign finance reform law.  And this sucks, because a constitutional amendment is a long, tough fight.  But it is THE issue on which all others hinge, especially in the wake of the Citizens United ruling.

I mean, c'mon...we are literally taking food out of the mouths of poor children to give big oil companies four billion dollars per year - ten times the cuts to the WIC program. That adult Americans in Congress stand by and let that happen shows just HOW CORRUPT our political system is.

C'mon, c'mon...we need 2/3 of the states to pass this amendment. The hard part will be Republican governors who won't get funding without corporate donations - they will veto this.  But that will make them hard to reelect - it is a long fight, but we have to do it.

This is the "change" we can believe in. It will free representatives to stand on principle, and on the interests of their constituents - which in some cases will include these large corporations as important employers. I will still get pissed, and bitch and moan, because I am to the left of most folks where I live, and reps will actually compromise in the interest of the communities they represent, which will include my more conservative neighbors.

But we won't get robbed, and we won't give huge chunks of our decades-earned wealth to the top 2%.  Amend now...change 2.1.0?