Should Dems Compromise Or Fight?

Republicans have thrown down the gauntlet: Ryan's proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program, and Medicaid into a block grant essentially eliminates both popular programs. Earlier, Republicans forced the tax giveaway to millionaires by extending all Bush's tax cuts. Now, they seem to think that Obama and the Democrats will cave before their demands on the debt ceiling negotiations: for huge program cuts in any programs serving the poor, like food stamps, or the middle class, like the mortgage tax deduction, in order to cut taxes on the wealthy even more. In Texas, Republicans debate a major tax cut for yacht owners.

If the Republicans are intransigent, Obama and the Democrats should demonstrate that they attempted reasonable compromise, but Republicans refused, demanding only capitulation.

Ultimately, Republican sponsors, the financial firms and large corporations, will force the hardliners to blink: they don't want the US to default, either.

Democrats should not give up their principles, or let down their constituents, many of whom depend on governments for their livelihood or safety.

Where do these conservative ideas come from, which demand that Texas cut its budget by about a quarter ($23 billion), to meet its shortfall, at the expense of its children (and its future), while not raising taxes on corporations, or millionaires and billionaires by one cent--and cutting taxes on yachts? Even worse is the spectacle of Florida's Rick Scott, who simultaneously lowered "business" taxes by billions, to be paid for by corresponding billions of cuts in education and unemployment compensation.

In other words, to Republicans, people don't matter, unless they're worth millions or billions. Teachers are overpaid, they argue, and unemployment insurance just encourages laziness.

And what do corporations, millionaires and billionaires do with all this wealth for which they've avoided paying taxes? They speculate, or they buy more "property," or collect ancient coins, or gold bars. Corporations have used their profits to go private, by buying up their outstanding stocks at premium prices. Until this last quarter, they hardly spent any of their excess cash on "creating jobs," except in other parts of the world.

Kathy Hochul, a progressive Democrat, just won a special election for Congress in an upstate New York district that's about as Republican as Nebraska. She won nearly a majority, despite having three opponents, including a Tea Party candidate on the far right, a Republican who dutifully followed the party line on eliminating Medicare, and a Green candidate on the left.

Clearly, Newt was onto something when he backed away from Ryan's Medicare plan, but Republican hard-liners made him eat crow.

Maybe there's hope yet that the great muddled middle will understand that corporatists are not their friends: they represent what I've called "the selfish class" (on this website); supporting them will kill any possibility of democracy, or of a viable middle class. Their way will lead us to our own "476."