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Bill Knight - August 18

http://stream.publicbroadcasting.net/production/mp3/wium/local-wium-982280.mp3

Macomb, IL – If the Capitol or corporate media bothered to notice, people prefer Democrats to Republicans in creating jobs (52% to 36%), in dealing with taxes (48% to 39%), and even dealing with the federal budget (narrowly, 42% to 40%), according to recent polling by Roper.

It apparently doesn't matter after the resolution of a contrived dispute about the debt ceiling - which is about borrowing to pay bills, not government's annual deficit or overall debt.

Held hostage by a minority of right-wing extremists, government reached a debt-ceiling settlement in a 269-to-161 vote in the House and 74-to-26 in the Senate. It showed the weakness of a White House so determined to seem reasonable it's become too willing to make concessions, and extortion by House loons who reneged on a deal when their initial demands were met.

It also showed that the grassroots don't seem to matter in the District of Columbia.

AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said, "Outside of Washington, job creation is at the top of everyone's agenda. Only in this topsy-turvy Alice in Wonderland place are long-term deficits more urgent than massive unemployment. We're years into a jobs crisis with no end in sight."

The deal raises the nation's debt ceiling by trillions over two years, mandates billions over 10 years in more cuts from domestic programs, and arranges a bipartisan commission to present its proposal of more than a trillion dollars more in cuts by Thanksgiving. If they can't agree, an automatic, across-the-board cut of more than a trillion will hit Medicare, the Pentagon and more.

The deal, with no new revenue, will hurt working people, according to Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for America's Future and co-director of its affiliated group, Campaign for America's Future.

Borosage said, "Americans will see investments in schools, research, public health, clean energy, transportation cut back. Inequality will grow; poverty will spread."

The poor and middle class could end up paying even more for the financial mess that Republican tax cuts and Wall Street made through greed. Amazingly, Americans are not insisting on class war, but shared sacrifice. Polls show that 66% support raising the income tax on people making $250,000 or more a year; more favor raising the $106,800 cap on the Social Security tax. (That's the level at which a taxpayer pays no more, so someone earning $100,000 a year pays in the same as someone getting $100 million a year.)

The old argument to ease taxation on the rich because they're "job creators" is obviously false. No jobs are being created, nor have they been during the years when tax cuts benefited the elite.

Supply-side economics has made tax cuts for the wealthiest a mantra since the 1980s, when the theory gained traction that freeing the rich from paying taxes at the level they had been (while getting rich) would lead to their investing in new businesses and more workers being hired. But that "trickle-down" effect hasn't happened.

What passes for the GOP has betrayed its own historic status as the party for fiscal responsibility, a tradition dating to before Eisenhower. Republican politicians are more interested in gaining or keeping power than closing tax loopholes or increasing taxes on those able to share the load - as Reagan repeatedly did.

Some conservative economists and apologists claim that the wealthy already pay most of the overall US tax burden. But that ignores the absolute vs. relative perspective. People pay the same for gas, a loaf of bread and a water rate, but it makes a big difference if that expenditure is part of $1 million or minimum wage.

At 9.1%, the jobless rate is still too high. Together with underemployment, that translates to between one-sixth and one-fourth of the workforce, depending on official figures or labor estimates.

So it's understandable that far more people believe government should focus on jobs (67%) than the deficit (29%), according to a summer poll for the American Association for Manufacturing.

And if companies can't or won't hire, despite staggering profits in the last couple of years, government is the social interest that can be the customer and the employer of last resort. If companies don't create jobs so workers become consumers and create demand for goods and services, then the government must create that demand, forcing firms to create jobs to meet it.

At least the debacle has angered the population. SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said, "The drawn-out debt ceiling debate has galvanized working people to come together en masse to redirect the discussion from catering to CEOs in board rooms, to relieving the pain of families at their kitchen tables across the country. The American people have lost faith that elected leaders alone will make this happen."

Indeed, already more people oppose Tea Party extremists (63%) than support them (30%), Roper notes. If Washington notices. If Americans make them notice.

Bill Knight is a freelance writer who teaches at Western Illinois University. The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of WIU or Tri States Public Radio