Merry Christmas – Here’s Your Lump of Coal!

Dr. Errington Thompson

No matter what your religion, this is a time of year for happiness, togetherness and celebration. With more than 6.3 million Americans being unemployed for more than six months, it’s hard for me to generate a lot of happiness. The president’s deficit commission has put everything on the table in order to “balance the budget.”

The Commission has proposed deep cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid as well as other programs. Republicans along with some conservative Democrats have decided that renewing unemployment benefits for millions of Americans should not be automatic but instead should be a bargaining chip to extend the President Bush era tax cuts.

So, while you and I are focused on how to pay our bills, keep the lights on, and put food on the table, the mainstream media is focused on the fact that Newt Gingrich believes that the Obama Administration is chaotic. Also, they want us to know that the former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee has a beef with Sarah Palin.

By the way, did you know that Bristol Palin was not forced to compete on
Dancing with the Stars? Who cares? Why is any of this important? How
does any of this help you and me?

We have real problems in this country. Our unemployment rate is 9.8%.
Our economy continues to be on life support. We want jobs. But, jobs are
not produced by tax cuts. If we learned one thing from President Ronald
Reagan’s trickle-down economics it was that it simply doesn’t work.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, from 1980 through 1990 wages
for the top one percent of Americans rose 80 percent, to just under an
average of $200,000 a year. During the same time period, wages for the
rest of us, the bottom 90 percent, rose by only three percent over this
decade. Three percent!

I won’t even mention that these tax cuts combined with an increase in
military spending grew our national debt almost 200 percent during the
eight years that President Reagan was in office. So, to prove that our
experiment in Reaganomics was a complete and utter failure, we decided
to repeat the experiment under President George W. Bush. The results
were exactly the same. Incomes for the rich skyrocketed. Median income
for the rest of us was basically flat. Trickle-down economics does not
work unless you’re rich!

Cold hard facts are hard to find inside the Beltway. Somehow real data
does not penetrate the Capital. Our elected officials have been arguing
over the Bush era tax cuts for more than three months. Fiercely
emotional arguments have been presented on both sides. Republicans have
argued that the tax cuts are necessary to stimulate the economy. They
will create jobs, according to the believers. Democrats have argued that
tax cuts for Rush Limbaugh, his rich buddies, and Wall Street fat cats
are ludicrous.

I think that you and I are missing the point: there seems to be
universal agreement on Capital Hill over corporate welfare. The
financial sector has not had to layoff thousands of people. As a matter
fact, in spite of a recession the financial sector just racked up $19
billion in profits. According to Senator Bernie Sanders the Federal
Reserve gave away over $3 trillion in order to prop up ailing financial
companies during the federal bailout. This is above and beyond the toxic
asset relief program. This money wasn’t used to create jobs. Instead,
this money was used to make Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley –
to name a few – look better on paper. Congress has given Wall Street an
armored money truck to secure all that lucre – while giving us, time and
time again, a lump of coal in our Christmas stocking.