In Congress and in state legislatures, the country seems to be on a backward slide. Hype about the federal and state deficits is being used as a blind for a systematic attack on programs to help the vulnerable.
It's clear that the concern about the deficit is hype, since the same legislators that cry "we're broke" are ones that are intent on giving away even more federal and state tax revenues to business interests or to the wealthy--as witness the GOP insistence that the Bush tax cuts (not really wanted by a majority of Americans when they were first passed) be "extended" for two more years for everybody, including the ultra rich.
We aren't really broke, as E.J. Dionne pointed out in his March 13th op-ed for the Washington Post. In fact, we are still a very rich country, and the richest among us--both individuals and businesses--are getting a bigger share of the income and assets of the country without paying a fair share to support the benefits they receive. We are in fact a tax haven country in which most of us could well afford to pay more in taxes to support important public programs. Our problem isn't that we are broke. Our problem is that no one, Republican or Democrat, has the political will to take positions adverse to the power of wealth in order to do what is needed to redress the imbalance in the allocation of capital. An improved (meaning, more progressive) estate tax and enactment of higher tax rates on upper brackets of income, together with restoration of the pre-Bush tax rates on the middle class, would put the US back on a sustainable course. Most Americans recognize that they will need to pay more in taxes. The difficulty is giving the legislators at the state and federal level the guts to be statesmen rather than shills bought by the most influential lobbies.
At least on one thing the American public is rapidly letting everyone know how their values and understanding of issues is changing. That's gay marriage. Just a short time ago, the right-wing so-called "family values" lobby seemed to be gaining traction in the US with their pogrom against rights for gay couples. Just a short while ago, less than a third of Americans were willing to say that they supported gay marriage. But now a new poll is out--from the Washington Post/NBC News--that shows that a majority (albeit a slim one) of Americans supports gay marriage. See Somashekhar & Craighill, Slim Majority Back Gay Marriage, Post-NBC Poll Says, Washington Post, Mar. 18, 2011.
That, my friends, is progress. Could it be that Congress will see fit to repeal DOMA sometime soon so that it is clear that gay couples who have made a marriage commitment can enjoy the same benefits (and suffer the same disadvantages) as other married couples? I hope so, though I admit that the odds are with this right-wing Congress it will take some time for the country's values on either taxes (we think corporations and the wealthy should pay more) or treatment of gays (we think the laws should not discriminate against them, including tax laws like joint return filing) to be reflected in congressional legislation.
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