Hostility on the home front
It seems that Congresscritters are facing a lot of tough questions, and some outright hostility at town meetings in their home states. From The Nation:
Congressman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, continues to be confronted with tough questions on his listening-session tour of southeastern Wisconsin communities. He’s been forced to move several of the events to bigger venues to accommodate the crowds—after things got tight and tense in places such at Milton, Wisconsin, where the crowd in a small venue was challenging him at every turn.
and
One of Ryan’s Republican colleagues, Wisconsin Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner, shut down a town hall meeting in a suburban Milwaukee community when he was challenged on economic issues in March.
This sounds a lot like the Tea Party invasion of town halls in 2009, only these folks have serious questions. The Tea Partiers intent was to disrupt, and get a lot of media attention. These folks are voters who have been suffering in this economy, and know very well when they’re being trickled down on.
The core issues that are bringing people out to the GOP town meetings are opposition to Medicare and Medicaid cuts (a real hot-button issue) and support for tax hikes for the rich. This fits with those national polls shows that show Americans are very opposed to developing voucher programs to replace traditional Medicare and Medicaid and would prefer tax hikes for the wealthy.
There is no solid, factual rationale for the proposed destruction of Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security for that matter. No wonder these guys are having such a hard time. How do you explain that you want to destroy essential social programs because of your political ideology without actually saying that’s the reason?
One guy has an idea for how to deal with this:
Newly elected Illinois Senator Mark Kirk has an idea. Instead of hearing what the people have to say, the Republican senator is suggesting that members of Congress should hunker down in DC.
Brilliant! If you don’t go home, you won’t have to answer any pesky questions.
Tags: Medicaid, Medicare, social security
“Monetary Contraction-The Depression was precipitated by a one-third drop in the money supply from 1929 to 1933, which was mainly the fault of the Federal Reserve. The Fed made further errors that helped put the economy back into recession in 1938.
Tax Hikes-President Hoover signed into law the Revenue Act of 1932, which was the largest peacetime tax increase in U.S. history. The act increased the top individual tax rate from 25 to 63 percent…Roosevelt imposed further individual and corporate tax increases. The highest individual rate was increased to 79 percent. State and local governments also increased taxes during the 1930s, with many imposing individual income taxes for the first time.
International Trade Restrictions-In 1930, President Hoover signed into law the infamous Smoot-Hawley trade act, which raised import tariffs to an average of 59 percent on more than 25,000 products. More than 60 countries retaliated by slapping new restrictions on imports of U.S. products. As new trade restrictions were imposed around the world, trade plummeted. By 1933, world trade was down to just one-third of the 1929 level.
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