The Budget Thugs: What Do They Know About the Economy?
Monday, 10 December 2012 11:06By Dean Baker, Truthout | News AnalysisHeritage Foundation, made himself famous in this video where he appears to be assaulting people protesting a conference organized by Fix the Debt. While this act of bad temper may be uncharacteristic of the public behavior of this corporate-sponsored crusade to cut Social Security and Medicare, it does reflect the way in which they hope to bully their agenda through the political process.
Ed Haislmaier, a senior scholar at theThe line from Fix the Debt, an organization that includes the CEOs of many of the country's largest corporations, and allies like The Washington Post is that we better have cuts to Social Security and Medicare because they say so. Note that they did not try to push this line in the elections. Everyone knows that cuts to these programs are hugely unpopular across the political spectrum.
The Fix the Debt strategy was explicitly to wait until after the election. They would