Those who will really get screwed are the self-employed, even though we are business owners too. We double pay not only medicare and social security (since we are both the employer and the employee) but we also pay for our own health insurance premiums.
What Obama should insist on is preserving Americans' forced contributions and their return to before we're so old it all ends up in the pockets of nursing homes and assisted living facilities. (And if Congress is going to cut or delay our benefits, it needs to either proportionately return the money we paid in or at least exempt us from future payments.)
Obama should get over his debt ceiling limit fixation and concentrate on blocking the spending cuts. So what if the ceiling lift is temporary and they have to raise it again? Who cares? No one in Congress is going to let the country default on its major obligations or shut down. The markets won't self-destruct if a temporary ceiling lift occurs without contemporaneous budget cuts.
But you want cuts? Fine. Cut the war funding. Stay out of other countries' local affairs. Stop spending our money to train other country's military, police and prosecutors. Reduce the size of our own military and the number of top brass. Stop the massive equipment contracts.
Cut the war on drugs funding. Disband the DEA and Organized Crime Drug Task Forces. Stop prosecuting and incarcerating people for non-violent crimes and crimes with no victims besides the perpetrators. Let the states handle all crime without a strong federal nexus.
With fewer federal prosecutions, we need fewer federal judges and can make substantial cuts to the Department of Justice, the federal judiciary and the Bureau of Prisons. Increase the use of "time served" over probation as a sentence, so we need fewer probation officers. Even if the person only spent one day in jail before making bond, time served is a legal sentence. Repeal the federal sentencing guidelines and mandatory minimum sentences for drug and non-violent crimes. (The prosecutors, judges, probation officers and drug agents laid off can go work for the states, if the states aren't smart enough to make similar changes.)
The more people we put in federal prison, the more money it costs us for their health care while incarcerated. We should especially let the elderly, non-violent inmates out of prison, so we can stop paying for their health needs in prison. Even the fraudsters. All these effective life sentences on the Bernie Madoffs of the world accomplish (other than feel-good retribution) is to ensure that when they hit 75 and 80 in prison, we end up footing the bill for their cancer treatments and other ailments. If they were out, we'd save buckets of money.
Stop building intelligence systems that spy on Americans. Ban expensive wiretapping and other forms of electronic surveillance except for national security. The vast majority of this funding is going to drug cases. Defund state and federal law enforcement task forces and stop the obsessive data-sharing. It's too expensive.
One way to get rid of this Congress? Make Congress a volunteer position, no pay. Almost every one of them will bolt. The rich already run our Government, so what difference does it make if we make it official so only the rich can afford to run for office? (Ok, that one's snark.)
I could go on and on, but if we need budget cuts, let's not do it on the backs of Americans who have paid their fair share and more for decades, trusting the promise of their Government that it would be returned on the terms that existed when they paid in.
One last thing to make clear. No one should take my criticism of Obama and the Democrats as support for Republicans, or a suggestion to vote for a Republican. Republicans are far worse than Democrats on every issue imaginable. The problem with Obama is he isn't embracing Democratic principles. He's moved too far to the center/right.
The point of this exercise is to change Obama's mind and stop him from going down this Republican engendered path, at the risk of a voter revolt against him and Democrats in 2012. We don't want that to happen, we want Obama and the Democrats to realize the error of their ways and change course before it's too late.
I will never vote for a Republican. Ever. They are the one causing the current crisis and cutting Medicare and Social Security is their idea. As was the war on drugs, war on crime, war in Iraq, war in Afghanistan and war on terror. The problem with Obama and the Dems is they are capitulating, when they should be fighting back.
