[Peace-discuss] Fw: EDITORIAL: "Debt Ceiling Debacle Points to Need for an Independent Labor Movement; Labor Must Reject Any Debt Deal From Congress and Call for Mass Mobilizations in the Streets to Oppose the Impending Attacks on Working People and the Poor!"

[David Johnson]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Larry Duncan 
To: Larry Duncan 
Sent: Saturday, July 30, 2011 4:18 PM
Subject: EDITORIAL: "Debt Ceiling Debacle Points to Need for an Independent Labor Movement; Labor Must Reject Any Debt Deal From Congress and Call for Mass Mobilizations in the Streets to Oppose the Impending Attacks on Working People and the Poor!"


THE ORGANIZER
P.O. Box 40009
San Francisco, CA 94140
Email: theorganizer at earthlink.net
Website: www.socialistorganizer.org
----------


[NOTE: Following is the editorial of the July-August 2011 issue of The Organizer newspaper. Please excuse duplicate postings. To order a sample hard copy of this new issue, please send a note to The Organizer, P.O. Box 40009, San Francisco, CA 94140.]


Debt Ceiling Debacle Points to Need
For an Independent Labor Movement


Labor Must Reject Any Debt Deal
>From Congress and Call for Mass
Mobilizations in the Streets to
Oppose the Impending Attacks
On Working People and the Poor!


By THE EDITORS


JULY 30 -- It has come down to the wire on the debt-ceiling negotiations.


At this writing, the House has just adopted a bill proposed by House Majority Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that had to cater to the Republican Party's Tea Party wing to win passage; it now insists that Congress must approve a balanced budget-amendment to the Constitution and send it to the states for ratification before the debt ceiling can be lifted. This will only further complicate a compromise with the Democratic majority in the Senate which, as expected, quickly rejected the House bill and supports the version proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).


In a televised press conference on July 29, President Barack Obama promised the high priests of Wall Street that there will be a final agreement by Monday, August 1. Obama has made such pledges in the past. This time the financial markets aren't quite so reassured. Press releases from Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake have sounded the alarm, raising the specter of a "global financial meltdown" should the U.S. default on its obligations.


Despite the heightened uncertainty, most political analysts -- noting that the two bills are really not that far apart -- still expect that an-11th hour agreement will be worked out before the deadline. The fact is that both bills before the Congress are all about spending cuts without any revenue increases from taxing the rich and the corporations.


Boehner's bill calls for raising the debt limit to cover debts for six months in exchange for $1 trillion in spending cuts, followed by an election year debate over the same debt limit in exchange for cuts of $1.8 trillion coming largely from Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid over the next 10 years.


The Reid bill -- which has been endorsed by President Obama and House Minority Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-S.F.) -- calls for raising the debt limit to cover debts for 18 months in exchange for $2.7 trillion in spending cuts, mainly deep cuts in domestic programs ranging from schools to the environment to mass transit and food safety.


Both bills would set up a bipartisan commission -- a so-called Gang of 12 -- with special powers to make further cuts to the social safety net, including to "entitlements."


Indeed, for all the promises by Obama, Reid and Pelosi that they would never accept a deal that excluded tax revenues, neither bill calls for the wealthy to pay anything in taxes. Both bills, moreover, call to form a bipartisan commission with an explicit mandate to make cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.


Behind all this political theater -- which is part posturing for the 2012 election and part the expression of a huge crisis of the two-party system in the face of the deepening crisis of capitalism -- one basic fact must not be overlooked: There is overall agreement between the central leaders of the Democratic and Republican parties when it comes to making the working-class majority shoulder the burden of the crisis created by Wall Street and fueled by the permanent war economy.


We Must Put a Stop to This Assault!


In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of letters have been sent to members of Congress calling for "Hands Off to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid!" The AFL-CIO, Change to Win, and unions across the country have taken a similar stand, reflecting the immense opposition among labor's ranks to any cuts to these three benefits programs.


In poll after poll, and through their massive letter-writing campaigns, the large majority of working people have supported the call to defend Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. They have supported the call to tax the rich and the corporations. They have supported the call for an end to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the redirecting of war dollars to create jobs and meet human needs.


The compromise that is likely to develop between Boehner, Reid and Obama over the next few days will not only target schools and vital social programs, such as Pell grants and funds for welfare recipients, it will also target the three so-called "entitlements" -- whether in six months (the Republican plan) or in 18 months (the Democratic plan).


Most important, any compromise will preclude federal funding for a massive public works program to put the 27 million unemployed and underemployed people back to work.


For an Independent Labor Movement Now!


This must be clear: To preserve and expand Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; to fight for a real job-creation program, and to fight against any and all cuts targeting the social safety net, it is vital for the unions to break their ties of subordination to the Democratic Party and act as an independent labor movement.


Despite all the talk by AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka on the need for an independent labor movement, the actual policy statements by the labor federation in recent days point in a different direction.


A July 27 posting by Manny Herrmann, online mobilization coordinator of the AFL-CIO, urges union members to oppose the Boehner plan but does not say one word about the Reid plan. And Herrmann concludes as follows:


"The president already has conceded to painful spending cuts -- cuts that we believe go much too far. But he rightly insists that we not put the entire burden of deficit reduction on working families."


The AFL-CIO believes that the cuts have gone too far and doesn't want to put the entire burden of deficit reduction on working people. This is not the language of an independent labor movement. It is a back-handed call for smaller cuts and for sharing the burden ("shared sacrifice") of deficit reduction with Wall Street and the employers. It is a call that accepts all the false premises of the twin parties of the bosses and the corporations concerning the origin of this financial crisis.


Our language must be clear: "It is Not Our Crisis, We Refuse to Pay For Any of It!"


The AFL-CIO, Change to Win, the National Education Association and all the independent unions must take a clear and uncompromising stance against any deal that may come out of Washington in the next few days. It must call to mobilize in the streets around demands that address the urgent needs of the working-class majority:


- No Cuts, No Concessions! Hands Off the Social Safety Net, Especially Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid!


- Make the Billionaires and the Corporations Pay -- NOT Working People!"


- For a Federally Funded Pubic Works Program to Put Every Unemployed and Underemployed Person Back to Work at a Living Wage!


- Bring the Troops Home Now from Iraq and Afghanistan! Money for Jobs and Human Needs, Not for War!


The Coordinating Committee of the Emergency Labor Network issued a Call to Action in which they include a specific appeal for labor and its communities allies, including the antiwar movement, to organize a nationwide Day of Actions on October 1, 2011 -- the day the new 2012 budget is slated to be made public and just a few days before the 10th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.


If the AFL-CIO and Change to Win were to issue such a call around the demands listed above, there could be hundreds of thousands of people in the streets nationwide. This could jump-start a real fightback movement. We could begin to turn things around. We could recreate the energy and excitement of Wisconsin everywhere.


Fightback Committees & Independent Political Action!


The Action Program adopted by the Emergency Labor Conference at Kent State University (Ohio) on June 24-26, 2011, calls for building Labor-Community Fightback Committees around these class-struggle demands, and it goes on to urge such fightback committees to organize Regional Working People's Assemblies to organize local and regional actions in the streets and workplaces.


Also, as proposed in the ELN Action Program, these fightback committees could further call on the labor movement and community organizations "to promote and support strike actions around our demands, such as the strike organized by ILWU Local 10 on April 4, 2011, in solidarity with the struggle waged by Wisconsin unions and their community supporters. The workers in Wisconsin, in their struggle, posed the urgent need for workplace actions, including a general strike, to win their demands."


Building these Labor-Community Fightback Committees and Popular Assemblies to promote the overall struggle around "No Cuts, No Concessions!" -- and linking labor's main fightback demands to the pressing demands of labor's community allies, such as "Organize the South!" and "Full Rights for All Undocumented Immigrants!" -- is an urgent task.


It is also important to note that the Action Program adopted by the ELN's Kent State conference affirmed, that "The time has come for the labor movement to promote a discussion on what it will take to build a Labor Party in this country. The ELN will make every effort to publicize and advance this goal."


We concur. In addition to acting independently in defense of its members and the working-class majority in the workplace and in the streets, the labor movement must open a wide discussion among the ranks of labor on the urgent need to break with the Democratic Party, one of the two parties of the bosses, and build a Labor Party based on the trade unions and involving all the organizations of the oppressed.


Let's send out the message far and wide: Working people need to build a party of our own, a Labor Party, if we are to fend off and reverse the steamroller that is headed our way!
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