Today, the masses were hit by the other half of a flying wedge. Alice Rivlin, friend of and mouthpiece for the monied elite, and conservative former Senator Pete Domenici released a 140 page set of recommendations which are even worse than the set of “assaults” unleashed on the economic security of middle and lower income Americans by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles . Like the Bowles and Simpson recommendations, the Rivlin and Domenici recommendations lower taxes for the rich, increase taxes for everyone else, and reduce Social Security and Medicare benefits.
Both sets of recommendations have an extensive number of reductions in retiree, civil service, military personnel pay and retirement benefits. The Tallgrass Activitist will be explaining these over the next few weeks in detail Such a large and obfuscated set of recommendations have been dumped out of these commissions in the past week, that a single blog post would be impractical.
What you won’t find in either set of recommendations is a call for the super-rich to carry their fair share of the burden. Neither will you find a recommendation to legislate a single payer, universal health care system into existence. Without that, health care costs will not be brought under control. Instead, the power-elite representatives on these commission are calling for increased premiums and reduction in benefits.
All of the burden – and I mean all of it – is falling on “non-rich,” “non-power-elite-connected,” Americans. Watch for details in the days and weeks ahead.
Note that on NPR yesterday, the “acerbic” (a nice word for it!) Alan Simpson attacked Paul Krugman, without, of course, addressing Krugman’s key point — that their proposal was supposed to address the deficit, not minimize tax burdens — especially on the rich.
What did you think of Jan Schakowsky’s proposal?