The Republican controlled Congress wants to cut $1.7 Billion from the operating Budget of the Social Security Administration. What effect would such cuts produce? Here’s a summary of what would happen over the next 7 months:
* The Social Security Administration will have to furlough its employees for up to one month between now and the end of the year (according to its administrators).
* 400,000 people won’t be able to get their applications processed in a timely manner for retirement benefits, Medicare, and survivor benefits, creating an ever-increasing backlog. Nearly 300,000 more will face additional delays in having their disability benefits processed, which would add an estimated 30 days to an already unacceptable 514-day backlog.
* Tens of thousands of internal reviews, which could prevent millions of dollars in inappropriate payments, will be delayed.
They also propose the following:
[T]hirty million dollars, an insignificant amount in overall budget terms, from the fund for “Flood Control and Coastal Emergencies”? According to the National Oceanographic and Aeronautical Administration (NOAA), damage from coastal floods and storms costs an average $11.4 billion per year, which is nearly four hundred times as much as the cuts would save. […]
… $330 million from the Treasury Forfeiture Fund, which isn’t even an expense item. It’s revenue. That’s the fund that administers all the assets seized by U.S. Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), the IRS Criminal Investigation unit, and the Coast Guard. […]
$74 million from the FBI. $256 million from “State and Local Law Enforcement Assistance.” $600 million from COPS, another program that gives grants for state and local policing. And more than half a billion from the IRS. That won’t just help tax cheats and money launderers. It will also impede the government’s ability to collect much larger amounts in revenue than these cuts will save, resulting in a bigger deficit than ever.
[T]hree hundred and thirty-six million dollars from NOAA (you know, the folks who help predict hurricanes and extreme weather so you and your local governments can prepare for the worst in a timely fashion
Well, we all have to share the sacrifice of massive government overspending, especially crime victims, old people, disabled people, and people at risk of suffering from hurricanes, flooding, etc. Or do we?
Here’s what Congressional Republican’s obtained in the tax deal last December? A $68 Billion estate tax benefit for the rich, i.e., taxes on estates after a $1 Million exemption for single people and a $2 Million exemption for married couples, over the next two years. That’s a lot of revenue they left on the table. I don’t know about you but my estate is not worth $million dollars so this doesn’t effect me one iota. In future years that exemption will rise to $5 Million per person and the top rate will drop from 55% to 35%. Not much shared sacrifice there.
And then there is the Daddy of all budget busters the Defense Department. If you watched cable news you might have been given the impression that the Defense department was going to have to cut its budget this year by a sizable amount. If you believe that, you would be wrong:
While spending for the Iraq war should be decreasing, as planned, in coming years, recently released budget proposals by both Democrats and Republicans show that base levels for Pentagon funding continue to rise.
If you have been following the headlines, you might be under a different impression. The debate over defence cuts has intensified this year, as a wave of Tea Party-backed legislators, including Senators Tom Coburn (Oklahoma), Johnny Isakson (Georgia), Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania) and Rand Paul (Kentucky), have insisted that everything will be “on the table” when it comes to reducing government spending. […]
Much of the discussion of “cutting” the military budget in Washington, DC does not actually amount to cuts, but rather, enacting smaller increases than might have otherwise happened. While the Republican budget for 2011 put forward by Representative Paul Ryan (Wisconsin) gives the Pentagon less than its full request, the funding levels it puts forward would still mean $8bn increase in the department’s base budget – raising it from $526bn to $533bn. This does not include supplemental funding for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor does it count money for military expenses – such as nuclear weapons – that fall outside the Pentagon’s remit.
Moreover, the base defence budget is likely to go up even further in 2012, despite administration vows to tighten its belt. Possibly seeking to preempt critics, in early January, Secretary Gates proposed $78bn in spending cuts, and $100bn in cost-saving measures for the Pentagon. His proposed savings, however, are spread out over several years, and are offset by increases in other areas of defence spending. In the end, Gates’s “reduced” budget request for 2012 still comes to $553bn, the largest in real terms since the second world war.
So much for the Military Industrial Complex biting the bullet.
Instead, the truth is that the Republicans have no real intention to cut the deficit. What they do intend to do across the country is to break public unions, slash essential services (education, for one) and privatize everything they can think of (prisons, law enforcement, schools, Social Security and Medicare, etc.).
What the Republicans want to do is summed up rather nicely by R.J. Eskow:
They want to dismantle government, to render it incapable of doing anything but serve the needs of the wealthy. […]
The Republicans are determined to paralyze the workings of government. Will people gather in the streets to resist this move, or sit on the sidelines as services they’ve paid for are shut down by an increasingly radical Congress and its wealthy patrons? The Egyptian uprising was triggered by cuts to social services, after all.
Here’s one thing you can do this Wednesday. Join your fellow Americans and rally at local Social Security Administration offices across the country at Noon on Wednesday, March 2nd to defend Social Security from the mindless rapacity of the GOP. Details regarding these rallies can be found at this website: Social Security: Keep it Working.
See you there.
