Once more, the pressures of work and our ongoing struggle in New Jersey have kept me from writing for our blog. 

But events are beginning to move quickly and all peoples movements must mount a campaign of "active defense" against the assaults of monopoly capital and specifically the so called "gang of six."

 I  use the term  "active defense"  to describe the tactics of the Soviet Red Army during WWII--that is  hitting the enemy back as you retreat, making him pay dearly for every mile gained, and finally gathering forces for a counterattack.

I am not talking about a scorced earth policy(which was a necessity during WWII) but I am saying that we cannot even think of supporting any "compromise" which locks the government into a longterm policy "austerity" which means  lowering the real incomes and living standards of the people in order to reduce public deficits and permit capital to expand profitably. 

 We have always believed that socialism was for the American people and all people the best choice.   We must begin to educate working people that given where  the U.S. and global economy is today, it is rapidly becoming the only choice.

Rightwing Republicans have  passed legislation raising the debt ceiling modestly, connecting that  increase with draconian cuts directed against social security, medicare, etc, and legislation to mandate a "balanced budget."  The latter is history repeating itself--not tragedy repeated as farce but the farce  of Ronald Reagan's call for a "constitutional amendment" to balance the budget while the federal debt more than tripled.  Today  it is transformed into a greater farce. 

But the main danger doesn't come from this screwball ultra-right legislation, which cannot be enacted.  It comes from a "conpromise" that President Obama has praised, the "gang of six" proposal which would raise the debt ceiling, accompanied by hundreds of billions in  immediate budget cuts, with Medicare a prime target,  and subequent trillions in cuts. 

 I have received an email by one of the "gang of six," Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, who has asked me to sigh a petition in support of this program.  Warner contends that  "enacting our plan will give business will give business reason to put their money into  the economy and start hiring again.  We simplify the tax code, lowering tax rates and removing special tax breaks and havens that will generate  1$ trillion in new revenue.  And we reform and strengthen our entitlement programs to ensure their longterm viability.  This proposal is not perfect....seriously reducing our debt and deficit  requires everyone to have some skin in the game."

Mark Warner has a better voting record than virtually all Senate Republicans.  But this statement shows us the severe limitations of supporting politicians like Warner, who represents an anti-union shop "right to work" state as the lesser of two evils over his Republican opponent.  It is also very much in the tradition of what George H W Bush in 1980 said of Ronald Reagan's economic program when he called it "voodoo economics."

First the arguments concerning removing "loopholes" and simplifying the tax code echo the contentions made when a Democratic House and a Republican Senate passed in 1986 a "reform" of taxation which greatly undermined a structure of progressive federal taxation established during WWII.  Taxes in reality were lowered for corporations and the wealthy and the loopholes were less used because they were less needed.  The Export of capital and jobs continued, along with speculative investments in real estate projects and the stock market.  There is no reason not to expect that today, in a much weaker economy, the effects will be very much the same.

Regressive social security and medicare taxes also increased sharply in the 1980s and Reagan helped to popularize the perjorative term "entitlements"(as if people were getting something for nothing)  for these programs, which he promised to "protect", even though the major threat  to them came from his administration.  Warner uses similar language and makes a similar promise, except here, given the state of the economy, the proposed cuts will be far more devastating to a  much larger senior citizen population.

The Reagan policies and the later Reagan and or GW Bush polices, further passed the buck to the states, saddling them with an enormous debt crisis.  Analyists are suggesting that this "Gang of Six" proposal will have a similar effect.  Trade unions suffered in a wide variety of ways thanks to the Reagan policies.  These proposals  can only have a similar effect, especially for public sector employees  under massive attack in many states.

We must mount a  campaign of "active defense" against these proposals.  First,  it must be made clear that they  are not and must not be the basis for negotiations.  Tax reform and the removal of loopholes are necessary, but further business tax reductions across the board will be counterproductive and cannot be accepted.  Business will "hire" when  Americans have the purchasing power to buy goods and services made in the U.S. and when  tax and other incentives are connected directly to the production of decent jobs.  Tax increases for the wealthy and  for the large corporations that export capital is  not  and cannot be the basis of a rationale economic program which can raise general living standards and ameliorate the present  deficit and debt crisis.

These policies represent at best a "center-right" position at a time while large numbers of Americans are rejecting the rightwing Republican solutions at the state level as they see the effects of those solutions.  The 2010 elections  were won by right Republicans in the House  and not by a significant majority because the Democratic majority and administration failed to effectively address the jobs issue in the Industrial Middle West, to create the kind of agencies that the New Deal government created to employ millions of unemployed and also to compel the banks to re-invest the "bailout" money given then in job  economic reconstruction, not permitting them to hoard capital. 

I agree with John Case and others that raising the debt ceiling is really a question of sanity.  But a settlement based on this program represents in effect a huge victory for the right and the  "return" to an ugly third wave of  "Reaganism," not to the New Deal and Great Society polices of expanding regulation of business and social welfare that voters elect edDemocrats and the Obama administration  to advance. 

Those policies  represent the only "sane solution" to the fiscal crisis, that is, raise and encourage greater equality in incomes, raise taxes on upper income groups and regulate business with an eye toward rewards and punishments based on quality job production and environmental protection in the United States.    Those policies must be advanced now by all progressive individuals and organizations in the U.S.