Resolution: 74A-13-2
Congress and the President are embroiled in a continuing battle over spending priorities that has already resulted this year in $42 billion in cuts to vital domestic programs. These automatic spending cuts, known as “sequestration,” have slashed funding for job training, education, housing, environmental protection, medical research, air traffic controllers, food safety, public safety, and other essential services. If Congress does not act, these automatic spending cuts are projected to reduce investments in vital public programs by $109 billion every year through 2021.
Already, these federal budget cuts have led to lay-offs and furloughs which translate into pay cuts for federal workers, and threaten state and local government programs and workers whose funding relies on federal support. This comes at a time when the U.S. lost almost half a million public sector jobs in the past year.
Federal budget cuts will reverse our already fragile, jobless recovery. According to the Bipartisan Policy Center, sequestration will reduce U.S. economic output by $7.9 billion in 2013 and result in the loss of one-million jobs throughout the economy over the next two years.
Now President Obama, in a misguided attempt to engage congressional Republicans in a budget deal that would also raise taxes on the wealthy, has proposed cuts in Social Security through a mechanism called the “chained CPI” that lowers future Social Security cost-of-living adjustments. If enacted, an average earner retiring at age 65 would experience a benefit cut of nearly $10,000 over 20 years, even with the so-called protections in the president’s proposal. These cuts are quite significant, given the median annual income of today’s elderly is just under $20,000. The chained CPI would also be used to adjust tax brackets, exemptions, and credits, leading to a hidden tax increase on low- and middle-income earners. Taken together, the chained CPI will slash Social Security benefits and lead to an across-the-board tax increase that disproportionately hits low earners.
President Obama also proposes to increase Medicare co-payments and deductibles that would affect many middle-income retirees. It is unconscionable to ask middle- and low-income seniors to pay more for Medicare and receive less in Social Security at a time in which the costs of medical care (which disproportionately impact seniors) continue to outpace overall inflation, and when the richest Americans have seen their incomes skyrocket and corporate profits are at an all-time high.
The fixation on federal deficit reduction is simply wrong. Our nation is in a jobs crisis, not a debt crisis. There are more than 21 million Americans who are out of work or seeking full-time employment.
The way to economic recovery and job creation requires more, not less, government stimulus in programs that put people to work and build the physical and human infrastructure for a globally competitive economy.
These investments can be paid for through an equitable tax system that requires the wealthy and corporate America to pay their fair share. Even as the income of the top one percent skyrockets, middle-class Americans pay almost the same proportion in taxes as the top one percent, when measured as a percent of income. The U.S. corporate tax rate is the lowest among 32 advanced economies, and many multi-billion dollar corporations, including Verizon, Facebook, General Electric, and Boeing, paid no federal taxes in the 2008-2011 period.
In addition, winding down the war in Afghanistan provides an opportunity to redirect military spending to vital domestic programs. Since 2001, the Pentagon budget has increased by 50 percent, growing nearly twice as fast as domestic spending to $700 billion a year, and accounting for 57 percent of all federal discretionary spending. There remain 68,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with similar numbers projected through the end of 2014, and an undetermined number (by some estimates up to 15,000) remaining after that. As US Labor Against the War has long advocated, the U.S. government should expedite the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and properly care for them when they return.
U.S. budget priorities must be based on the recognition that true national security derives from a country that invests in people’s health, education, employment, retirement security, food and environment, a modern infrastructure, including universal high-speed broadband networks.
Resolved: CWA will educate our members and take action to oppose proposals that would reduce Social Security benefits and raise out-of-pocket Medicare expenses on middle-income recipients.
Resolved: CWA will educate our members and join with our allies to support a federal budget that increases tax revenues on the wealthy and large corporations; cuts military spending by the maximum amount consistent with true security for our people; and adequately funds programs that create jobs, invest in people and a 21st century infrastructure, and protect the social safety net on which millions of the elderly, children, disabled and others depend.
Resolved: CWA will educate our members and join with our allies to support policies that promote jobs not wars. CWA supports repurposing non-essential military spending to fund programs that rebuild America through the development of new sustainable technologies and 21st century manufacturing, construction of affordable housing, modernization of our nation’s physical and social infrastructure, and the deployment of universal high-speed broadband to all Americans.