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<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@hotmail.com href="mailto:tanstl@hotmail.com">David Sladky</A>
</DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Wednesday, November 14, 2012 4:15 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Union leaders meet with Obama, back austerity drive against
workers</DIV></DIV>
<DIV><BR></DIV>
<DIV dir=ltr>
<H2>Union leaders meet with Obama, back austerity drive against workers</H2>
<H5>By Barry Grey <BR>14 November 2012</H5>Trade union leaders met Tuesday with
President Barack Obama to give their support to his plans for massive cuts in
social programs upon which tens of millions of workers depend.<BR>The hour-long,
closed-door meeting at the White House was the first act in a carefully
orchestrated campaign to convince the public that unprecedented cuts in
Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, food stamps and other welfare programs are
the only alternative to economic disaster in the form of the so-called “fiscal
cliff.”<BR>
<DIV id=inline-appeal>The task assigned to the union chiefs is to counter broad
popular opposition to the cuts by promoting the White House claim that it is
pursuing a “balanced” approach to deficit-reduction, combining spending cuts
with increased taxes on the rich.</DIV>Also on Tuesday, the post-election
“lame-duck” Congress, which continues to sit until the newly elected Congress
takes office January 1, reconvened. Previous deals between the White House and
congressional Democrats and Republicans insured that the lame-duck session would
be conducted in an atmosphere of crisis over hundreds of billions of dollars in
tax hikes and automatic spending cuts slated to begin January 1.<BR>No sooner
was the election out of the way than the ruling class launched a mind-numbing,
saturation media campaign over the need to enact a bipartisan deficit-reduction
plan before the new-year. Both the Democrats, who control the White House and
the Senate, and the Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, agree
that such a plan must include sweeping cuts in social entitlements and a
comprehensive “reform” of the tax system.<BR>The major sticking point is the
rejection by the Republicans of any increase in income tax rates for the
wealthy. Obama campaigned on allowing Bush-era tax cuts for households making
more than $250,000 to expire. However, he and other Democrats have given signals
since Election Day that they might accept a cap on tax deductions, as proposed
by some Republicans, and pare back or drop their call for a hike in tax rates
for the rich.<BR>On Wednesday, Obama will meet with the CEOs of 12 major
corporations, including General Electric, Walmart, American Express, Honeywell,
Ford, IBM, Pepsico and Chevron. On Friday, he will hold talks with the top
congressional leaders of both parties.<BR>AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stuck
to the script as he emerged from the White House meeting Tuesday, declaring: “We
are very, very committed to making sure that the middle class and workers don’t
end up paying the tab for a party that we didn’t get to, and the president is
committed to that as well.”<BR>This is a lie.<BR>As Trumka well knows, Obama is
entering into talks with the Republicans having previously, in July 2011,
offered a deficit-reduction plan that would raise the eligibility age for
Medicare and cut health benefits for the program’s elderly recipients, reduce
Social Security payouts to retirees, slash the Medicaid program for the poor,
cut health benefits for veterans, and gut other social programs. At the same
time, the plan would cut tax rates for corporations and the wealthy and limit or
eliminate tax deductions that benefit the middle class and working class.<BR>The
union officials did not even mention the likely expiration January 1 of extended
unemployment benefits, which will deprive more than 2 million jobless workers of
cash assistance.<BR>William Daley was White House chief of staff when Obama
offered the Republicans this $4 trillion “grand bargain” deficit-cutting
proposal, including $2.8 trillion in spending cuts. Daley told Bloomberg News
last week that Obama would likely use that plan as the starting point in the
current negotiations with the Republican leadership, noting that the president
and Republican House Speaker John Boehner had been “80 to 85 percent of the way”
to an agreement before the talks broke down.<BR>At the White House meeting
Tuesday, Trumka was accompanied by Mary Kay Henry, president of the Service
Employees International Union (SEIU), Lee Saunders of the American Federation of
State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and Dennis Van Roekel, president
of the National Education Association (NEA). Also present were the leaders of
liberal organizations linked to the Democratic Party, including the Center for
American Progress, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and
MoveOn.org.<BR>Prior to the meeting, Kay told the <EM>New York Times</EM>, “We
expect to have the president’s back on the agenda that the voters just declared
support for. The president has always said he needs a movement behind his
mandate.”<BR>Kay was echoing the line of the Democrats that last week’s election
was a popular mandate for bipartisanship, compromise and reining in the deficit.
On the Sunday news interview programs, Democratic spokesmen uniformly spouted
this position, in an attempt to justify their support for austerity
measures.<BR>Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press” program, New York Senator
Charles Schumer told moderator David Gregory, “Well, I agree with you, the
mandate is compromise… We hear the mandate, continue to cut spending, but they
[the Republicans] have to hear the mandate—real revenues…”<BR>Newly elected
Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro declared, “I believe you’ve got a Democratic
Congress… that are willing to make those tough choices, that know that in the
long term that we’ve got to reform entitlements. But we want some
balance.”<BR>The claim that the election was a mandate for bipartisan compromise
and austerity is a fiction. A sharp fall in the overall vote, including a
decline of 6-7 million votes from 2008 for Obama, reflected disillusionment and
alienation from both parties and the entire political system.<BR>In so far as
the undemocratic and corrupt electoral process allowed any expression of popular
sentiment, it revealed hostility to the pro-corporate austerity policies
advocated most openly by the Republicans. This was seen particularly in the
defeat of so-called Tea Party Republicans in key House and Senate races.<BR>At
the same time, exit polls showed large majorities in favor of raising taxes on
the rich and avoiding cuts in social programs, and little concern over the
deficit.<BR>Whatever form it ultimately takes, the budget deal between Obama and
the Republicans will fuel working class anger and opposition, which will be
increasingly directed against the Democratic administration. The union
bureaucracy is being called upon to head off opposition from workers, but this
will succeed only in further discrediting both it and the right-wing
organizations it controls.<BR></DIV></BODY></HTML>