Obama's Big Payback to Wall Street
The Worst Deal in American History?
By MIKE WHITNEY
Is Obama's debt ceiling agreement the worst deal in US history?
Probably. But not for the reasons that are presently
being discussed in the media. What makes the deal such an unmitigated
disaster is that it strips congress of its Constitutional authority to
control the nation's purse-strings. That authority will be handed over
to a bipartisan committee that will decide how to slash $1.5 trillion
from the budget in order to reduce the deficits. But, since the
committee will be evenly comprised of Republicans and Democrats, there's
bound to be disagreement about what programs should be cut. This is all
by design, because if the committee is unable to decide where the
cutbacks should be, then the decision will be made for them via an
"enforcement mechanism" that will require across-the-board spending
cuts.
Pretty sinister, eh? It's is a backdoor way of
repealing Congress's primary authority while making austerity the
default position of the US Government. Whenever in doubt, "Cut
spending". Naturally, the GOP refused any agreement that would involve
new taxes.
This is from the White House website:
"The Deal Locks in a Process to Enact $1.5 Trillion
in Additional Deficit Reduction Through a Bipartisan, Bicameral
Congressional Committee: The deal creates a bipartisan, bicameral
Congressional Committee that is charged with enacting $1.5 trillion in
additional deficit reduction by the end of the year....
To Meet This Target, the Committee Will Consider
Responsible Entitlement and Tax Reform. This means putting all the
priorities of both parties on the table – including both entitlement
reform and revenue-raising tax reform.....The deal includes an automatic
sequester on certain spending programs to ensure that—between the
Committee and the trigger—we at least put in place an additional $1.2
trillion in deficit reduction by 2013."
Not surprisingly, liberal pundits everywhere are moaning that Obama was
"mugged" or worse, that he was "blackmailed".
What nonsense. This is the plan that Obama wanted from
the very beginning, liberals were just unwilling to listen until now.
They were too caught up with his lofty oratory and his personal history
as if that was surefire proof of a kind heart and a progressive outlook.
Well, guess what? It's not. The man is not who he
pretends to be. Here's a clip from a speech Obama gave in November 2008,
before he even took office, and long before the budget deficits had
become a problem:
"Our economy is trapped in a vicious cycle:
the turmoil on Wall Street means a new round of belt-tightening for
families and businesses on Main Street ....we'll have to scour our
federal budget, line-by-line, and make meaningful cuts and sacrifices as
well."
Huh? You mean Obama was prattling the right-wing mantra before he ever set foot
in the Oval Office?
Uh huh; which explains why he picked the two losers
most responsible for the Crash of '08 to lead his economics team;
Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner. Obama devotees shrugged off the
appointments as a rookie error unwilling to breach any criticism of the
Dear Leader. Even now, they cry "Foul", claiming Obama was either
hoodwinked or --get this--a "poor negotiator".
Get real. Obama is as far right as you can get without donning a Tricorn hat
and joining a militia. Don't believe it?
Here's an excerpt from his book Audacity of Hope where he gushingly praises his
boyhood hero, Ronald Reagan:
"Reagan spoke to America's longing for order,
our need to believe that we are not simply subject to blind, impersonal
forces, but that we can shape our individual and collective destinies,
so long as we rediscover the traditional virtues of hard work,
patriotism, person responsibility, optimism, and faith.
That Reagan's message found such a receptive
audience spoke not only to his skills as a communicator; it also spoke
to the failures of liberal government, during a period of economic
stagnation, to give middle-class voters any sense that it was fighting
for them. For the fact was that government at every level had become too
cavalier about spending taxpayer money. Too often, bureaucracies were
oblivious to the cost of their mandates. A lot of liberal rhetoric did
seem to value rights and entitlements over duties and responsibilities.
Reagan may have exaggerated the sins of the welfare state, and certainly
liberals were right to complain that his domestic policies tilted
heavily toward economic elites, with corporate raiders making tidy
profits throughout the eighties while unions were busted and the income
for the average working stiff flatlined.
Nevertheless, by promising to side with those who
worked hard, obeyed the law, cared for their families, and loved their
country, Reagan offered Americans a sense of a common purpose that
liberals seemed no longer able to muster. And the more his critics
carped, the more those critics played into the role he'd written for
them--a band of out-of-touch, tax-and-spend, blame-America-first,
politically correct elites (Audacity of Hope, 31-32). (Excerpt from,
Christopher Caldwell, What Obama Owes to Reagan, Daily Kos)
Have you ever heard a progressive opine so
breathlessly on the Gipper's virtues or palaver about hard working, law
abiding patriotic Americans, all of which is code for flag-waving
right-wing fanatics?
Obama wasn't blackmailed; he's as corporate as they
come. Just look at the record. Here's an excerpt from an article by
FAIR's Jeff Cohen:
"In 2006, a relatively new Senator Obama was
the only senator to speak at the inaugural gathering of the Alexander
Hamilton Project launched by Wall Street Democrats like Robert Rubin and
Roger Altman, Bill Clinton's treasury secretary and deputy secretary.
Obama praised them as "innovative, thoughtful policymakers." (It was
Rubin's crusade to deregulate Wall Street in the late '90s that led
directly to the economic meltdown of 2008 and our current crisis.)
In early 2007, way before he was a presidential
frontrunner, candidate Obama was raising more money from Wall Street
interests than all other candidates, including New York presidential
candidates Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.
In June 2008, as soon as Hillary ended her
campaign, Obama went on CNBC, shunned the "populist" label and
announced: "Look: I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the
market." He packed his economic team with Wall Street friends --
choosing one of Bill Clinton's Wall Street deregulators, Larry Summers,
as his top economic advisor." ("Obama is NOT "Caving" to Corporate
Interests, Jeff Cohen, Smirking Chimp)
Obama has been zeroing in on Medicare, Medicaid and
Social Security from the very beginning. Why else would Wall Street
throw their support behind a total "unknown"; a two year senator with no
foreign policy experience and a background in community organizing.
That's hardly the type of resume that makes one a shoo-in for Empire's
top-spot. There must have been a quid pro quo, a tacit understanding
that if Obama was elected, he'd carry out the corporate/Big Finance
agenda. And, so he has.
The debt ceiling fiasco just proves that Obama keeps his promises. In other
words, it's "payback time."
http://www.counterpunch.org/
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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