Following Thursday’s White House meeting, Republican senators insisted that any agreement would have to include sweeping cuts in Medicare and Medicaid as well as severe reductions in discretionary social programs such as food stamps, home heating assistance, education and housing.
Speaking for the Obama administration,
Vice President Joseph Biden reassured the Republicans and big business that “everything was on the table” in the debt ceiling talks, including Medicare. Biden made his remarks following the third meeting of a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers working with him on an agreement to raise the debt ceiling and impose austerity measures.
Neither the politicians nor the media bother to explain why, in a country where the richest 1 percent of the population controls some $16 trillion—40 percent of all household wealth and more than enough to cover the national debt—it is the working people and the poor who must be stripped of health care and other social services. And this in the midst of a desperate social crisis precipitated by the speculation and swindling of the banks.Obama’s meeting with Republican senators Thursday followed a meeting the previous day with Senate Democrats at which the president cautioned against “drawing lines in the sand” in talks with Republicans on raising the debt ceiling.
Such deference to the most right-wing sections of the political establishment—a hallmark of Obama and his administration—has, as always, encouraged them to press their demands more insistently.http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/may2011/budg-m14.shtml