Republican plan boosts Pentagon, cuts social programs(AP) WASHINGTON - The Republicans who control the House are using cuts to food aid, health care and social services like Meals on Wheels to protect the Pentagon from a crippling wave of budget cuts come January. The reductions, while controversial, are but a fraction of what Republicans called for in the broader, nonbinding budget plan they passed in March. Totaling a little more than $3. Meanwhile, the House Appropriations Committee unveiled a $6. Pentagon wanted to cut next year and provides nearly $1 billion for Israeli missile defense programs. The House Budget Committee meets Monday to officially act on the measure, the product of six separate House panels. It faces a likely floor vote Thursday. The measure kicks off Congress' return to action after a weeklong recess. The House will also vote on a spending bill funding NASA and the Justice Department and on legislation to reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. The Senate, meanwhile, has a test vote slated for Tuesday on a plan backed by President Barack Obama to prevent a doubling of college loan interest rates. According to new reports, President Obama is once again offering cuts to popular social programs such as Medicare and Social Security as a bargaining chip in the. What is Obama trying to cut from Social Security? RECENT PROGRAMS; POLITICS; ARTS; NATION; WORLD; ECONOMY; SCIENCE; HEALTH; EDUCATION; TEACHERS; TV. Obama’s Social Security Cuts Are Our Wake-Up Call. That follows the European model of cutting. Fully one- fourth of the House GOP spending cuts come from programs directly benefiting the poor, such as Medicaid, food stamps, the Social Services Block Grant, and a child tax credit claimed by working immigrants. Federal workers would have to contribute an additional 5 percent of their salaries toward their pensions, while people whose incomes rise after receiving coverage subsidies under the new health care law would lose some or all of their benefits. The budget- cutting drive is designed to head off a looming 1. Pentagon on Jan. 1 because of the failure of last year's deficit . The Obama administration and lawmakers in both parties warn the reductions would harm readiness and weapons procurement, and reduce troop levels. The House Appropriations Committee bill released Monday includes $5. Afghanistan and other counterterrorism activities. That's $1. 1 billion more than the current level and $3. Mr. Obama requested.
The panel provided $2. Air Force's Global Hawk, the high- altitude unmanned aircraft used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. Part 6: The Obama Administration’s evidence-based social policy initiatives: An overview Ron Haskins, Advisory Board and Jon Baron, President. World Socialist Web Site. US President Barack Obama restated his support for cutting Social. President Barack Obama and lawmakers are considering cutting Social Security and increasing revenue by changing the way the government measures inflation. The Pentagon wanted to mothball 1. The automatic spending cuts, known as a sequester, would strike domestic programs as well, including a 2 percentage point cut from Medicare payments to health care providers. The sequester required by the supercommittee's failure would abruptly wring about $1. GOP measure is more gentle in the near term, cutting deficits this year and next by less than $2. Particularly dubious is $2. Costs would be offset by assessments on other institutions over subsequent years. Barney Frank, D- Mass., a key architect of the 2. And $5. 6 billion in savings over 1. Medicare and Medicaid as a result of curbing medical malpractice lawsuits is speculative, too, relying on a CBO estimate that assumes changes like capping punitive damages will produce a half- percentage- point cut in health care spending. The cuts will be dead on arrival in the Democratic- controlled Senate this year. But they're likely just a sample of what's in store next year from Republicans if Mitt Romney wins the White House and the GOP takes back the Senate. Romney promises much tougher cuts to domestic programs and an even bigger boost in the Pentagon's budget, while the House GOP budget promises sharp cuts to Medicaid and a dramatic overhaul of Medicare for future beneficiaries. Warring Democrats and Republicans hold sharply opposite views of the cuts. To GOP lawmakers, steps like blocking states from gaming food stamp eligibility rules to boost benefits or trying to stop illegal immigrants from claiming tax refunds of up to $1,0. And they won the 2. Obama's health care law. But Democrats say Republicans are unfairly targeting the poor and vulnerable. They believe that legislation to prevent the Pentagon cuts should include tax increases that strike wealthier people. The proposed GOP cuts pale in comparison to the $5 trillion in cuts called for over the coming decade by the broader — but nonbinding — GOP blueprint, authored by Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R- Wis., who's often mentioned as a potential vice presidential choice. They're getting far less media attention as well. Stepping into the debate, however, has been the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, who forcefully oppose cuts to programs that help the poor and vulnerable, singling out cuts to food stamps as . The vast majority of children who would be affected by the tax credit proposal are U. S. Democrats noted that the program comes in the form of flexible block grants, an approach that Republicans advocated in the Ryan budget regarding Medicaid and food stamps. Republicans say the Social Service Block Grants program duplicates other efforts. Obama pledges more bank bailouts, cuts in social programs. April 2. 00. 9. In what was billed as a major economic policy speech, President Barack Obama on Tuesday defended his administration’s multitrillion- dollar taxpayer bailout of Wall Street, claiming it was moving the economy toward recovery. At the same time, he outlined a policy of budget austerity that will hinge on containing health care costs and exacting funding cuts from basic social programs. The speech, delivered at Georgetown University in Washington D. C., was characterized by evasions and lies. Obama adapted his rhetoric somewhat to growing anger toward the government and the finance industry over the bank bailouts. This phony populism did not alter the speech’s central purpose, which was to prepare public opinion for further bailouts of the biggest banks and attacks on the core entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. He suggested that these handouts have begun to work, referring to supposed signs of an economic recovery, an implicit reference to the surge of share values on the major US stock exchanges and recent earnings reports from banks showing hefty profits. The equation of increasing share values and bank profit margins with broader economic recovery is false. In fact, the recent success of banks has resulted largely from Obama’s favorable policies, such as his new bailout scheme that will subsidize hedge funds to purchase the banks’ toxic assets. These policies entail a massive transfer of social wealth at the expense of the working class, which faces mounting layoffs and foreclosures in spite of the new moneymaking on Wall Street. Obama reiterated that his administration will “clean up those bank balance sheets” by providing “banks with the capital and the confidence necessary to start lending again.” Appropriating money for Wall Street is “the purpose of the stress tests that will soon tell us how much additional capital will be needed to support lending at our largest banks,” he added. Obama is aware that masses of Americans hate these policies, noting, “There are a lot of Americans who understandably think that government money would be better spent going directly to families and businesses instead of to banks.” He continued, “You know, one of my most frequent questions in the letters that I get from constituents is, . It makes sense intuitively, and morally it makes sense.”Despite this “intuitive” sense, Obama made clear that no such bailout was coming. Instead, he repeated the lie that bailing out the banks would aid the population. He claimed, “A dollar of capital in a bank can actually result in eight or ten dollar of loans to families and businesses.” Yet the bailouts have thus far failed to create the promised wave of bank lending. Obama admitted as much later in his speech, noting, “Credit is still not flowing nearly as easily as it should.” Obama trotted out the tired economic blackmail argument, claiming that should the “free market” be allowed to work for the banks as it does for the millions who face layoffs and foreclosures, that the crisis could “last for years and years.” He also referred specifically to demands that he nationalize the banks, claiming without providing reasons that “government takeovers are likely to end up costing taxpayers even more in the end.” He added that “it’s more likely to undermine than create confidence,” a cryptic reference to the veto power Wall Street wields over the economic decisions of the government. Criticism of the bank bailouts dismissed, Obama spent the next portion of his speech reiterating that the country can expect more of the same. Obama also indicated that the government will extend the bank bailout to more insurance corporations and endorsed recent demands made by Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke and Geithner that Congress grant “new legal authority” to the executive branch so it can infuse insolvent firms with emergency cash and loans without public scrutiny. Later in his speech, Obama made vague reference to implementing “new rules for Wall Street.” “It is simply not sustainable,” he said, “to have a 2. From an administration that has actively worked to thwart taxation on million- dollar executive bonuses at bailed- out financial firms, such threats of new regulation will be taken with a grain of salt. Obama did not tarry long on the first four pillars, but a considerable portion of his speech was dedicated to the fifth, “restoring fiscal discipline.”This austerity will not extend to the bailouts of the financial industry, as Obama made abundantly clear earlier in his speech. It will come at the expense of social programs upon which tens of millions depend. Obama boasted that he would “reduce discretionary spending for domestic programs as a share of the economy by more than 1. This will not come from the military budget, which has been handed a record $6. Obama alluded twice to the crisis in the auto industry. Untroubled by the clear double standard in his administration’s funneling of trillions to the big banks who continue to bestow millions on their executives, Obama has predicated further loans to General Motors and Chrysler on auto workers giving up massive wage and benefit cuts. This is Obama’s “plan to put . This “interpretation,” however, did not proceed beyond a description of the most immediate causes of the collapse. According to Obama, the crisis was caused by a “perfect storm of irresponsibility and poor decision- making that stretched from Wall Street to Washington to Main Street.” To Obama, in other words, the crisis is not systemic in nature. It was caused by many mistakes and poor decisions, in which the ordinary (i. Main Street”) are equally culpable. Yet taken at face value, Obama’s description of the immediate causes of the collapse implicitly places the blame on the big banks. While “Americans found they could take out loans that by traditional standards their incomes just could not support,” Obama said, “. Obama made no effort to square this description of the crisis with his overriding aim to continue to hand over enormous quantities of money to Wall Street, and his refusal to hold responsible the executives and large stockholders primarily responsible for the collapse. This is because Obama and the Democratic Party, like the Republicans, are a political tool of these same Wall Street interests. Their primary objective is to ensure that the economic crisis be resolved in the manner that most favors the financial elite.
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