Great Article...By Ezra Grant

Repub­li­cans have long wished for the time when the poor and suf­fer­ing would move out-of-the-way, and allow the mil­lion­aires, bil­lion­aires and Cor­po­ra­tions to pros­per. In their view, poor and mid­dle class Amer­i­cans are try­ing to take away all the pro­grams the gov­ern­ment has estab­lished to ben­e­fit the rich. Repub­li­cans call these “enti­tle­ment pro­grams,” and the sooner they’re able to push and squeeze oth­ers off these pro­grams, the sooner the rich can benefit.

No place is this more evi­dent than in Florida, where a new Tea­party can­di­date, rep­re­sent­ing the Repub­li­can party, held a town­hall meet­ing to address his sup­port­ers. Mr. Allan West, the House rep­re­sen­ta­tive for South­east Florida told the crowd that he would love to abol­ish the Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice and fed­eral income tax, while retain­ing tax cuts for bil­lion­aires. West also wants to stop the exten­sion of unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits to the mid­dle class and refers to the gov­ern­ment pro­vid­ing these ben­e­fits to mid­dle class Amer­i­cans as, “rewarding bad behavior.”

In ref­er­ence to Social Secu­rity, Medicare and Med­ic­aid, West thinks that leav­ing these ser­vices in tact will deplete our GDP by 2030 or 2040. His plans would be for the even­tual dis­man­tling of these ser­vices that again for the most part assist the poor peo­ple and mid­dle class. Spokes­woman for DCCC Jen­nifer Crider said;

“Every­one agrees we need to cut spend­ing, but Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Allen West is mak­ing the wrong choice by forc­ing seniors to shoul­der the bur­den and while not ask­ing Big Oil com­pa­nies mak­ing record prof­its to sac­ri­fice even the small­est amount.”

Social Secu­rity is a pro­gram that mostly pays for itself. Over the last few years, how­ever, the pro­gram has began to show signs that it will even­tu­ally fall short of its goals of com­fort­ably pro­vid­ing for its ben­e­fi­cia­ries, mainly because more peo­ple are enter­ing into retire­ment and also because the labor force is reduced due to the eco­nomic down­turn. Repub­li­cans, who have been try­ing to dis­man­tle the pro­gram for decades, are now using the econ­omy and the fed­eral deficit as rea­sons to bring social secu­rity to its knees. Some Democ­rats, like Sen­ate Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, are deter­mined to fight these efforts of the Repub­li­cans. In a recent inter­view, Mr. Reid said;

“I have said clearly and as many times as I can, leave Social Secu­rity alone. Social Secu­rity does not add a sin­gle penny, not a dime, a nickel, a dol­lar to the bud­get prob­lems we have. Never has and for the next 30 years it won’t do that.

“So what I’ve said, if you want to look at some­thing to take care of the out years, let’s do it at the right time. It is not in a cri­sis at this stage. Leave Social Secu­rity alone. We have a lot of other places we can look that are in cri­sis. Social Secu­rity is not. I repeat, for the next approx­i­mately 30 years peo­ple will draw 100% of their benefits.”

Mr. West’s think­ing is com­mon amongst Repub­li­can party mem­bers. Many Repub­li­can gov­er­nors nation­wide have begun break­ing down the mid­dle class in order to sup­port their rich donors. Recent exam­ples in Wis­con­sin, Detroit, and Florida are just some of the states where Repub­li­can gov­er­nors are cre­at­ing laws geared towards remov­ing any form of assis­tance from the mid­dle class worker, and trans­fer­ring that assis­tance to the rich. Rick Scott of Florida recently pro­posed a bill that will cut school sub­si­dies in his state by $1.3 bil­lion, while at the same time, giv­ing a tax cut of $1.6 bil­lion to millionaires.

It is a trans­fer of wealth like we haven’t seen in quite a long time, and it started over 30 years ago when Ronald Regan intro­duced the idea of trickle down eco­nom­ics. The con­cept embraces the belief that giv­ing to the rich will in turn allow them to pro­vide jobs to the mid­dle class, thus trick­ling down the wealth. But this idea failed in the Rea­gan years, caus­ing the pres­i­dent to raise taxes in an effort to fight off a down­ward turn in the 1980 econ­omy. And although it failed then, trickle down eco­nom­ics was embraced by con­ser­v­a­tives over the past 30 years, and con­tributed heav­ily to the most recent reces­sion that started in 2007/2008 under the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. Accord­ing to reports from The Atlantic;

When Clin­ton left office in 2000, the Cen­sus counted almost 31.6 mil­lion Amer­i­cans liv­ing in poverty. When Bush left office in 2008, the num­ber of poor Amer­i­cans had jumped to 39.8 mil­lion (the largest num­ber in absolute terms since 1960.) Under Bush, the num­ber of peo­ple in poverty increased by over 8.2 mil­lion, or 26.1 per cent. Over two-thirds of that increase occurred before the eco­nomic col­lapse of 2008.

Unfor­tu­nately, here we are in 2011, and the trickle-down trend has con­tin­ued. Repub­li­cans are now tak­ing away from schools, edu­ca­tion, cut­ting back on planned par­ent­hood and pub­lic radio, in an effort to finance the bank accounts of the rich. Will the Amer­i­can peo­ple wake up from their slum­ber before it’s too late? Will we ever real­ize that the last 30+ years of trickle down eco­nom­ics did noth­ing for the mid­dle class, and every­thing for th über rich? If we con­tinue to go down this path we’ve been on for the past 30 years, why should we expect a dif­fer­ent outcome?

Amer­ica can once again be what the found­ing fathers intended it to be. The pre­am­ble to the con­sti­tu­tion says it best;

We the Peo­ple of the United States, in Order to form a more per­fect Union, estab­lish Jus­tice, insure domes­tic Tran­quil­ity, pro­vide for the com­mon defence, pro­mote the gen­eral Wel­fare, and secure the Bless­ings of Lib­erty to our­selves and our Pos­ter­ity do ordain and estab­lish this Con­sti­tu­tion for the United States of America.