Dispatch from the Class War: Rich is Better

by Jim Washburn

Republicans Offer a Gold Mine for the Rich, and the Shaft to the Unemployed

If you’re one of the millions of Americans who are out of work, and for whom the fulltime job of searching for work has yielded no results, help is on the way.

No it isn’t, but I wanted to make you feel better for a few seconds before delivering the real news: Congressional Republicans announced this week they’re adamant about blocking any further extension of jobless benefits, so you and two million other jobless saps can head into the holidays and the chill winter with a nice warm mug of drop dead.

Some Republicans claim the unemployment benefits are a disincentive to work: If Uncle Sam keeps sending checks to the unemployed—even if the amount averages an unsurvivable $310 a week—why would the lazy slobs want to work?

There probably are a few people like that, and thank Christ that Republicans’ unwavering values don’t let the plight of the many keep them from punishing the presumed unjust.

While the Republican leadership evidently gets its statistics direct from a vengeful god, Labor Department figures show that jobhunters who have been without work for a year or more stand only an 8.6% chance of being hired in the next month. Unemployment continues to climb, while the majority of hires now are in low paying jobs with no security or chance for advancement.

It’s not just the two million jobless folks—454,000 of them right here in California—who will suffer. The lead story in last Wednesday’s L.A. Times examines the radiating effect of the unemployment money, where, along with helping families to make ends meet, it has served as a stimulus to the overall economy, pumping “billions of dollars into the financial bloodstream of the nation’s economy.” The article notes that 33 of the nation’s leading economists, including five Nobel laureates, have urged the government to extend the benefits for the good of the nation.

Without the extension, families barely holding onto their homes will lose those homes; those scraping to make their rent will join the ranks of the homeless; markets and businesses where those jobless dollars were spent will lay off workers, adding to the already staggering unemployment numbers.

The latest word from Washington is that extending the jobless benefits, which would cost the nation an estimated $56 billion, may become a bargaining chip in the Republicans’ all-out push to extend tax cuts for the richest Americans, which would cost the nation $700 billion.

That, to them, is the paramount issue in the country. So that the two percent of Americans who already control over half the wealth and who rake in 24.1% of the nation’s annual income can pay marginally less taxes than they did during their wildly prosperous Clinton years, Republicans are willing to hold every other American taxpayer hostage.

Unless their chosen class of people gets to keep their 3% tax cut, congressional Republicans have signaled that they are willing to let the tax cut expire for all Americans at year’s end.

And that’s just the start. On Wednesday, Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY Jelly) announced that his party is unified in a pledge to block any and all legislation before Congress until the tax cut is resolved to their satisfaction. The deficit, unemployment, national security, the trade gap, climate change, Afghanistan, Social Security: all that and everything else takes a back seat to tax cuts for the wealthy.

The pledge in a sense is grandstanding, since Republicans have already spent the last two years filibustering legislation, blocking administrative and judicial appointments and otherwise doing all they could to prevent the Obama administration from gaining any traction, whether it was in the nation’s interest or not.

Consider the START treaty. Its passage was considered a no-brainer: The Secretary of Defense, Robert M. Gates (a conservative who was first appointed to that position by George W. Bush, and who previously helmed the CIA) told Congress that renewing the START treaty, which expired this year, is vital to the nation’s security, and that Republicans’ arguments that it could hamper U.S. missile defense are baseless.

Gates isn’t alone. Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Michael G. Mullen supports the treaty, as do Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, James Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger, and Colin Powell, who served as Secretary of State for five Republican presidents.

But what do they know compared to Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who has blocked the treaty in committee, initially claiming there hasn’t been time to study it. (They’ve only had it in hand since, what, April? Maybe he’s a slow reader.)

Kyl (Jesus, buddy, buy a vowel, would you?) is singing a new tune this week, saying he wouldn’t free up the treaty for a vote—you know, that thing they do in democracies—unless Obama caves in on tax cuts for the wealthy, with a deadline of today (December 6).

“Trust, but verify” was Ronald Reagan’s admonition on nuclear arms control deals with Russia. START was our verification process. Without it, our inspectors don’t have access to Russian arsenals and facilities. More dangerous than what the Russians might do in secret is what they might not do: lax security and storage could result in fissionable materials winding up in terrorists’ hands.

Keeping us secure from nuked-up jihadists is somehow less important to Kyl and his cohorts than maintaining the historically low tax bracket for the Americans who have benefitted the most from their country and who are most able to pay back towards its future during these difficult times.

Of course, the Republicans amping up their “party of no” status at this juncture also helps them run out the clock until they’re seated as the majority in the House in January. It is right and proper that they do this, McConnell says, because “Last month, the American people issued their verdict on the Democrats’ priorities.”

There is little profit in pointing out that two years ago, when voters issued their verdict on the Republicans’ priorities by sweeping Obama into office, McConnell and Co. showed their respect for the people’s will by blocking it at every opportunity, making record use of their extra-constitutional filibuster powers. They’re right you see, and everyone else is wrong.

Consider Rep. Trent “abortion is worse for blacks than slavery was” Franks (R-AZ), who last week said on the House floor, “If this administration continues to go in the direction it’s going, Mr. Speaker, I am afraid that we will all wish we had these days back again when we could’ve prevented some great tragedies that may befall us because of the ideological commitment of this administration to weaken America.”

This was said of our sitting president, one who has presided over increases in our military budget; who has tripled our troop strength in Afghanistan; whose administration has thwarted terrorist attacks at home and who has not hesitated to upset the world by sending missiles and troops into sovereign nations in pursuit of terrorists; and who at this writing is visiting with our troops in Afghanistan: all this evidently to shield the fact that he’s a socialist bent on destroying America.

So say the folks who are willing to bring America to its knees in order to gain tax cuts for its monied bosses; who have more compassion for the rich and comfortable than for the millions of hardworking Americans who are finding it so hard to find work.

It’s going to be an ugly next couple of years, folks.

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