Progressive Opinion

dailykos.com — Tucked away in the final quarter of Rep. Paul Ryan's budget manifesto is yet another proposal for dismantling the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Over the past 47 years, no thanks to the 92 percent of Republicans in Congress who voted against it, the program has prevented massive hunger in America. Most SNAP benefits go to families with children, to seniors and people with disabilities, 93 percent of them households below the poverty line, now set at $22,350 for a family of four. It's no surprise that those who would be hurt worst by cuts in SNAP benefits would be those who can afford it least. And they've already taken hits. But, as with so much of Ryan's plan — the Republican plan — previous cuts just aren't enough, whether of taxes for the wealthy or of social spending for everybody else. These guys won't be satisfied until we're back to 1925 in so many, many ways.

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nytimes.com — Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, sounds upset. And you can see why: President Obama, to the great relief of progressives, has called his bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who’s counting? And then Mr. Obama laid out a budget plan that really is serious. The president’s proposal isn’t perfect, by a long shot. But the vision was right, and the numbers were far more credible than anything in the Ryan sales pitch.

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huffingtonpost.com — Civil rights proponents and progressive forces need to counter the pro-Ryan Tea Party factions by putting people in the streets and on the hill to support President Obama's debt reduction plan. On the Monday following National Action Network's convention, we opened our Washington bureau precisely to monitor Congress and the White House from a civil rights advocacy standpoint -- and this will be our very first project. Even though the debt reduction plan has things we don't agree with, the basic principles are items we cannot go without. Following weeks of negotiations, private meetings and a near federal government shutdown, President Obama delivered his official response to the budget crisis: those who have benefited the most from our way of life can afford to give a bit more back.

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huffingtonpost.com — Thank you for making a world where once there were only a few thousand people who would stand up to prevent the oppression of middle class workers and now there will be hundreds of thousands. You have breathed new life into the worker's rights movement and given us a national stage for our struggle. Thank you for showing the whole world just how far you and other conservatives are willing to go to serve your ideology instead of your constituents. This stark example of your rhetoric being contradicted by your actions was a wakeup call that we all needed to keep motivated and focused on our goal of creating a fair economy in our country.

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huffingtonpost.com — Okay folks, it looks like the whole country is now playing Peter Peterson's budget ball. For those not familiar with him, Peterson is a Wall Street investment banker. He has made billions of dollars through his dealings and government subsidies, and now he is using much of this money to accomplish a lifelong quest, gutting Social Security and Medicare. In Peterson's budget ball, we can't make any changes that might create any serious inconvenience for the rich and powerful. We can have some small cuts in defense and modest tax increases for the rich as window dressing, but what we are left with is a massive budget deficit and nothing but Social Security, Medicare, and other social programs left to cut. That might sound like a rigged game, but Peterson is paying for it, so he gets to set the rules. What else would we expect? The big question is whether President Obama is also playing this game. We will find out tonight.

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huffingtonpost.com — As I have previously warned — and I hope I'm wrong — President Obama seems on the verge of needlessly cutting America's most valued social program and the one that best differentiates Republicans from Democrats. This is part of a vain effort to appease deficit hawks in his own party and on Wall Street, as well as Republicans who are utter hypocrites when it comes to deficits — increasing them as long as the purpose is tax cuts but then turning around and demanding program cuts in order to reduce the deficits they created. All the choreography is in place for the president to embrace Social Security cuts in his upcoming State of the Union address.

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huffingtonpost.com — A lot has been said about the proposed tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and the austerity measures recommended by President Obama's deficit commission. However, an analysis of the impact that both proposals would have on black and brown Americans has been missing from the conversation. What has not been made clear to date is that the nation's changing demographics means that today's children of color will predominantly be on the hook for paying for the profligate spending and poorly designed policies of the past 12 years.

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dailykos.com — There is no more notion of shared responsibility among many of our nation's elites. They have successfully managed not only to purchase policies that enhance their ability to accumulate an even higher percentage of the nation's wealth; they have also managed to create a political environment where one party (and a significant portion of another) is so dedicated to preserving that accumulation that they will sacrifice everything else — including nuclear security — to continue it. In the previous incarnation of feudalism, at least the lords had an obligation to be the military protectors of the land. These days, they don't even have to do that--they just profit from the wars that lesser mortals fight. In previous societies, stark degrees of wealth inequality result in social unrest and even revolution. But I suppose that like George W. Bush, our current crop of elites is counting on being dead by the time history — or the masses — comes to judge them.

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nytimes.com — Former Senator Alan Simpson is a Very Serious Person. He must be — after all, President Obama appointed him as co-chairman of a special commission on deficit reduction. So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. ... When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’ ” meaning spending cuts. “And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued. Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.

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slate.com — If Pete Peterson can't get politicians to be specific about spending cuts at his own Potemkin campaign event, when can he? Maybe when the commission issues its report he can push the political consensus toward entitlement cuts. But how is yet another round of generic bellyaching about the debt likely to make that happen? Every election cycle — and yes, we are now in the 2012 election cycle — is cursed with organizations like this. They try to manufacture the conventional wisdom by being bland and talking about the need for politicians to start doing important things, without ever saying what those things are.

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