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A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Wednesday documents the vast gulf between the sentiments of the great majority of working people in the United States and the policies of the financial aristocracy who control the Democratic and Republican parties.
The poll found huge majorities opposing any cuts in Medicare (78 percent) and Medicaid (69 percent) and supporting increased taxation on the wealthy (72 percent). Meanwhile, in elite circles, such policies are completely ruled out. There is not a single major political figure in either of the two parties controlled by big business who advocates the views held by better than two-thirds of the American people.
This divergence is all the more remarkable given that there is zero support in the corporate-controlled mass media for such flat-out opposition to the budget cuts. The parameters of the official debate are set by President Obama, ostensibly representing the “left, who proposed $2 trillion in social spending cuts last week, and Republican Congressman Paul Ryan on the right, whose budget plan called for $6.2 trillion in cuts, including the dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid. The “center” is supposedly represented by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission appointed by Obama, which proposed $4 trillion in cuts.
Hence the support for tax increases on the wealthy across all political affiliations: 91 percent of self-identified Democrats, 68 percent of independents, even 54 percent of Republicans. The only social demographic that did not support an increase in taxes on those making $250,000 a year or more was that high-income bracket itself. The official budget debate amounts to a conspiracy against the American people.
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