Nadler, Polis Push Today to Cut Deficit by Trimming Empire

http://www.truth-out.org/nadler-polis-push-today-cut-deficit-trimming-empire67821

President Obama and House Republicans are out with their budget plans for the next fiscal year. Economist Jeffrey Sachs described it thus: President Obama wants to bleed the patient. House Republicans want to cut the patient's arm off. As Sachs pointed out, it's only possible in our "Mubarak Egypt" political terrain - both party leaderships catering to the super rich, largely ignoring the interests of the vast majority of Americans who must work or scrounge to earn their daily bread - that we can have a debate premised on the absurd notion that the budget deficit is an urgent crisis while we have 10 percent measured unemployment and many Americans - disproportionately veterans - don't have a decent place to sleep.

But if that weren't outrageous enough, amid all the blather about "shared sacrifice," there is another group of powerful people that are largely escaping budget pain, in the plans of leaders of both parties, besides the super rich: the partisans of the Empire.

The quagmire in Afghanistan grinds on, even as more and more of its former cheerleaders lose interest and conviction. Our Afghanistan policy is living in denial, postponing acceptance of the inevitable - that we need to make a plausible accommodation with the Afghan Taliban and get out - a denial that imposes a tremendous cost in human life and national resources.

Meanwhile, leaders of both political parties, purportedly seized with the alleged urgency of cutting spending, are silent on our huge network of foreign military bases, despite the facts that

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