On Monday afternoon, I interviewed Maria Allison, publisher of the Nuts And Dolts blog about the artificially generated debt ceiling crisis.  You can hear an hour long interview by going to The Working Family Radio Network on Thursday, Aug. 4 at 3:05 PM EDT.  Can't wait until Thursday?  Visit my  Listen Here! page for a special mini interview.

Many of our electeds love to preach "austerity" and "shared" sacrifice.  They infer that we, the people did something wrong that caused the deficit.  That's like saying that a rape victim caused her rape because she wore "suggestive" clothes.  Make no mistake about it, as members of the bottom 98%, we were the victims of a mass economic rape.  As a matter of fact, we were gang banged by our electeds and the upper 2% who own them.

I'm going to use the family budget analogy to explain how our electeds destroyed our economy and how there is only one way to fix it.  When you sit down at the kitchen table to hash out the family budget, you take out your paycheck, and divvy it up  to cover your bills and expenses.  If you lose that paycheck or have a reduction in income, you have to get it back or practice fiscal triage and sacrifice some expense items.  Maintaining your income will allow you to keep some of life's luxury items like food and shelter.

Now that we're clear that increasing income or revenue is always preferable to making draconian cuts in expenses or in the case of government, infrastructure and safety net spending.  Let's see how that applies to and what is the real cause of the deficit.  Our troubles started when Ronald Reagan decided that it was more important for America's corporations to have a source of cheap labor than for America  to have a manufacturing infrastructure and for American workers to have the kind of manufacturing jobs that made the American dream possible.  He did that by lowering many trade tariffs on imports which started corporate America's outsourcing frenzy.  Ever since then, globalization and job outsourcing continued as a given through every administration and was escalated by Bill Clinton's “free” trade policies that featured job killing NAFTA.

We are now at the point where America has become a country without a product.  Our corporatons have become order takers that have their products manufactured overseas in contracted factories, under questionable working conditions for low wages then have their trademark slapped on the product. This process has not only caused unemployment in many industries, but has destroyed America's manufacturing infrastructure.  The U.S. corporations that comprise the high tech sector, who pride themselves on their design capabilities and, in some cases boast that their products are designed in the U.S.A. are actually giving American technology to China when they have their products made there.  That American technology wouldn't have been possible without all the taxpayer financed research that took place under NASA's space program.

With diminished employment possibilities and stagnant salaries, the Bush administration had a novel approach to the problem of a middle class that was rapidly becoming impoverished, he gave them the illusion of prosperity by encouraging them to borrow.  Heck, they were still part of the middle class as long as they could tap their credit cards and take out secondary mortgages on their homes to make up for wages that didn't cover their expenses.  The next paragraph ties it all together.

By encouraging "free" trade, our government has allowed Americas corporations to use the third world as it's hiring hall.  As our citizens lose their jobs, or take low paying jobs, our government loses tax revenue.  Instead of doing the right and patriotic thing for America and the American people by passing legislation that discourages imports and encourages manufacturing here, our electeds from BOTH parties have let America run up a negative balance of trade tab with China.  That's why China has invested so heavily in U.S. Treasury notes, to protect THEIR interests.  Translation, the American government is borrowing due to a diminishing income, just like the middle class did under Bush.

So now we have the spectre of President Obama endorsing three NAFTA like "free" trade agreements as job creators instead of the job killers they are when the real, honest  solution to unemployment, the deficit and most of our economic problems is exactly the opposite.  To balance America's budget, our electeds must not hack away at America's safety net and infrastructure, they must increase America's tax revenue by passing legislation that undoes the damage that they did to our country over the past thirty years.  Legislation that discourages U.S. corporate offshore manufacturing in the strongest possible way, by reversing every bit of pro "free" trade legislation that was passed since the Reagan regime and by re-instituting each and every tariff on imports.

Let's bring back the American dream and restore America's economy by bringing every bit of manufacturing back to the U.S.A.  That can't be done when the President endorses "free" trade agreements and cuts to Social Security as the solution.   If it takes a third party, a Labor Party to fix America's problems than so be it.

The Republicans and their shock troops, the teabaggers get their candidates elected by convincing middle class voters that any safety net government extends to their neighbors and even, in some cases to their families will translate into higher taxes or a sharp increase in the deficit that they or their children will have to pay in the future.

The Republicans' cynical and selfish message to the middle class voter is:

• That entitlements are anything but entitlements, they are burdens on anyone not collecting them.
  
• That Social Security isn't something that a retiree richly deserves after a lifetime of paying into the system, it's an entitlement which can be cut to reduce the deficit.
  
• That unemployment insurance isn't something that was deducted from an employee's paycheck to protect that employee, it's just a form of welfare for lazy people.
  
• That paying a unionized government worker a fair wage comes out of their pockets.
  
• That unions cost taxpayers money because their members make more money and have better benefits than a non union worker.
  
• That education is a luxury, not a necessity that can be reduced or eliminated from a state's budget.
  
• That anyone in need is a freeloader who will cause lifeboat America to sink.
  

The Republicans use the above in an attempt to pit working person against working person, middle class against poor, black against white, young against old and non-union against union.  The crux of their message is simple, if they get something, there won't be enough left for you!  That translates to, if they get on the lifeboat, it will sink so let them drown!

If anyone still thinks that the Republicans are truly sincere about deficit cutting, I am going to dispel that illusion right now.  Any budget has two main categories, income and expense.  If you have little or no money coming in, you have little or no money to spend.  A working family's income comes in the form of a paycheck.   Any government gets it's income by taxation.  Over the years, working people have been taxed to death while corporate America and the rich have gotten constant tax breaks.

Since you can't get blood from a stone, our Republican electeds are now cutting expenses by cutting government services and what they refer to as “entitlements”.   Nothing important, just education so we can become a third world country.  Nothing important, just “entitlements” like the Social Security that was deducted from everyone's paycheck that would have been self sustaining if a certain President with the initials R.R., acting on the advice of Alan Greenspan didn't decide to use the Social Security fund for general government expenses.   Reagan set a precedent that literally robbed the seniors of their future!   Speaking of entitlements, someone should tell the Republicans that Unemployment Insurance isn't welfare it's a form of insurance that is deducted from an employee's paycheck. Republicans hate it because their pet corporations have to contribute part of it into the fund for their employees.

Finally, the Republicans are using the budget deficit issue as part of their ongoing war on unions by attacking the right of collective bargaining for unions in the public sector. If they can eliminate unions in the government sector, they have set a precedent for their corporate backers to also become union busters. When that happens, goodbye middle class!

The reality is that there's a big fat elephant that's sinking America's lifeboat! Working Americans, the retired and the poor must throw the elephant overboard in 2012!