Paul Pounces On Lagging Super Committee

By Adrianna McGinley

Presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) blasted the so-called super committee for failing to produce a plan to reduce the national deficit by $1.2 trillion over the next 10 years, an amount Paul called “laughably small.”

In a statement released Monday, Paul said the super committee “merely needs to cut about $120 billion annually from the federal budget over the next 10 years to meet its modest goals, but even this paltry amount has produced hand-wringing and hysteria on Capitol Hill.”

Paul said the cuts the 12-member panel was tasked with making were from previously proposed increases, and nothing substantial would have emerged even if a deal was made. The fact that they did not accomplish that goal, Paul said, “shows how unserious politicians are about our very serious debt problems.”

The Texas congressman accused the federal government of “lying” when promising to provide Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits to future generations while simultaneously “maintaining our wildly interventionist foreign policy.”

To eliminate new debt and create a balanced budget, Paul proposed returning to the $2.3 trillion federal budget of 2004, a figure he estimates will match that of the national GDP.

“Was the federal government really too small just seven years ago, in 2004? Of course not,” Paul said. “Only Washington hysteria would have us believe otherwise.”

The super committee is expected to announce Monday that no deal has been reached.

Lawmakers, Citizens Ask Super Committee To Wake Up

U.S. Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Ben Cardin (D-MD), and Rep Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) led an event on Thursday in which hundreds of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries gathered together to ask the Super Committee to “wake up” and take entitlement programs off the table.

“This country in fact does have a serious deficit problem but the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars unpaid for, it was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in the country, it was caused by a recession as a result of the greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior on Wall Street,” Sanders declared at the event.”If those are the causes of the deficit and the national debt, I will be damned if we will balance the budget on the backs of the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor. That’s wrong.”

Along with the lawmakers who called on the Super Committee to stay away from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts, community leaders related their personal stories and struggles and how Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid cuts would affect them.

“I want a country that rich people can care about people and not only about profits and that means not cutting Social Security, not cutting Medicare and not cutting Medicaid,” Vermont native Virginia Humphrey passionately stated before the crowd. “I want Congress to wake up.”

As the event ended audience members began to chant, “We are the 99%”  and revealed their plan to deliver alarm clocks to Super Committee members’ offices to symbolize their campaign for Congress to wake up.

PICO National Network led a group of around 50 individuals to Super Committee member Senator John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) office with alarm clocks ringing in their hands as they chanted “Hey Kerry, Wake Up.” 

The Super Committee’s deadline to cut $1.2 trillion from the nation’s budget by November 23 is fast approaching.

Bloomberg Urges Super Committee To Go Big, Promotes Higher Taxes For All

By Andrea Salazar

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on federal lawmakers Tuesday to seriously address the nation’s debt and deficit by allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire.

In a speech at the left-leaning Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C., Bloomberg touted the plan put forth last year by President Obama’s debt commission. The proposal co-crafted by Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, featured large spending cuts, scaled-back tax breaks, increases to personal tax rates and tweaks to federal entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare.

“The spending cuts in Simpson-Bowles, plus Clinton-era tax rates, plus closing some tax loopholes and ending wasteful subsidies would save $8 trillion and effectively bring our budget into balance by 2021,” Bloomberg said during a speech at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

Bloomberg warned that the current deficit committee’s goal of $1.2 trillion in cuts “would be almost as bad as getting no deal at all.” He called that figure “a drop in the bucket” compared to the nation’s $14.6 trillion debt.

“It will allow Congress to walk away from real deficit reduction until at least 2013.”

Calling for “a flatter and lower” tax, Bloomberg called on President Obama to allow the Bush tax cuts expire for all tax brackets.

“All income groups have to be part of the solution,” Bloomberg said. “It’s fair to ask those who earn more to bear more of the burden. That is the whole idea behind a graduated income tax,” Bloomberg said. “But all of us should help carry the load.”

However, the Mayor, who also happens to be the 12th richest person in the U.S., acknowledged that his recommendations are not a “cure-all,” adding that entitlement, tax and immigration reforms are also necessary.

Addressing the gridlock in Congress, Bloomberg pushed Democrats and Republicans to compromise. “We are not going to be able to cut our ways out of the problem and we’re not going to be able to just tax our ways out of the problem,” he said. “We must do both.”

“All sides have to be willing to give on something,” Bloomberg added. “We don’t have to slaughter the sacred cows but we do need to get a little milk from them.”