I Remember America

It has not always been this way. Maybe we're all suckers for the down-the-memory-hole 24-hour news cycle nonsense that has afflicted this country for far too long already, because it is getting harder and harder to remember the simple fact that it has not always been this way.

This, however, is how it is now.

On Wednesday, the Democratic president of the United States will stand somberly before a bank of television cameras to announce the orderly annihilation of the social contract that has guarded and sustained the American people for generations. It was a Democratic president who created that contract, followed by other Democratic presidents who defended it, and now a Democratic president is choosing to undo it. Not all at once, of course. It will take time in the doing, but the downhill run to that dissolution begins tomorrow.

http://www.truth-out.org/print/947

responding to that here.

No, you look here

More than half of the $38 billion in spending cuts that lawmakers agreed to last week in the 2011 budget compromise that averted a government shutdown would hit education, labor and health programs. Funding for federal Pell grants, job training and a children's health-care initiative would face cuts, senior congressional aides said. A multitude of other programs - from highway and high-speed rail projects to rural development initiatives - also would experience significant reductions.

The bill contains some policy provisions, including language preventing Guantanamo Bay detainees from being transferred into the United States for any purpose. And it eliminates funding for four Obama administration "czars," whose positions had been vacant: the "health care czar," "climate change czar," "car czar" and "urban affairs czar."

Republicans were able to terminate more than 55 programs in the areas of health, labor and education, resulting in a total savings of more than $1 billion. In addition, two minor components of President Obama's health-care law will be eliminated: the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan and the Free Choice Voucher programs.

Although the pain would be felt across virtually the entire government - the deal includes a $1 billion across-the-board cut shared among all non-defense agencies - Republicans were able to focus the sharpest cuts on areas they have long targeted. The Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, which represent about 28 percent of non-defense discretionary spending, face as much as a combined $19.8 billion, or 52 percent, of the total reductions in the plan.

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency, long a target of conservatives, will see a $1.6 billion cut, representing a 16 percent decrease from 2010 levels. Key EPA programs include the Fish and Wildlife Services ($141 million cut from last year), the National Park Service ($127 million cut from last year) and "clean and drinking water state revolving funds" ($997 million cut from last year).

-----------------------------------------

President Obama will call for shrinking the nation's long-term deficits by raising taxes on wealthier Americans and requiring them to pay more into Social Security, drawing a barbed contrast with a Republican plan to save money by deeply slashing Medicare, Medicaid and other domestic spending.

Obama will offer some spending cuts, including trims to the Pentagon's budget, but his speech Wednesday is likely to provide Americans with a vivid choice between higher taxes or fewer benefits, issues that will color the national debate straight through the 2012 election.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-spending-20110412,0,2255928.story

----------------------------
By Greg Sargent

A bunch of people today have been proceeding, with dismay, from the assumption — reported in various places — that the President’s deficit reduction speech tomorrow will embrace the Simpson-Bowles approach. But there are increasing signs that this may not be the case, and that Obama will lay out a vision uniquely his own that could — conceivably — be better than expected for liberals.

At the White House press briefing today, spokesman Jay Carney hinted that all the reporting out there today is wrong, and insisted Obama’s vision would not be based solely on any particular plan.

<snip>

What’s more, other stories out there today are encouraging. The Los Angeles Times, for instance, reports that Obama tomorrow will draw a sharp contrast with the GOP by insisting on tax hikes for the rich. Crucially, the story even suggests the model for what Obama will do is the 2005 fight over Social Security, in which Dems drew a hard line on entitlements and refused to budge.

Obviously that is a very optimistic read on what will happen. But I can say that the White House has indicated to me that Simpson-Bowles will not be the primary foundation for Obama’s speech. Ezra Klein was told the same.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/moderately-encouraging-signs-about-what-obama-will-say-tomorrow/2011/03/03/AFCGmXRD_blog.html


Sounds like you want to "Take America Back"....
sounds teabaggerish to me!

Lol

Seriously though, got tired of the gd responses so you bring it here??

am horrified by the deal that has been made.