rally against LIHEAP cuts with Dutchess Outreach's Brian Riddell Monday!...

Hi all...

Join Dutchess Outreach Executive Director Brian Riddell, Community Voices Heard, and the Real Majority Project at our Rally to Save LIHEAP from Cuts-- this Monday (March 7th) from 4:30 to 5:30 pm-- against the proposed 50% cut to the federal Low-Income Heating Assistance Program-- at the corner of the Rt. 44/55 eastbound arterial and Market Street (corner where our county's DSS Building is; 60 Market Street) in Poughkeepsie!...

[DSS Commissioner Bob Allers told us just recently that literally 3500 families right here in Dutchess rely on LIHEAP.]

Don't forget toll-free number for Congress: (866) 338-1015 too-- necessary to call ALL representatives; it's not just Obama and GOP, folks-- even Hinchey has waffled on this in recent vote (confirmed this recently with Brian Riddell)-- so call Hinchey, Hayworth, Gibson, Schumer, Gillibrand, all of 'em-- to tax millionaires they way they used to be in the 50's under Eisenhower (at 91% rate instead of current 35% rate; see/sign http://www.PetitionOnline.com/ILikeIke )...

Thanx tons to all who came out to the first one of this Feb. 24th-- Cablevision, Brian Riddell, Community Voices Heard's Edgar Gomez, Patricia Diaz, and Jenny Loeb, long-time community activist Barbara Lindsey, and Holy Light Pentecostal Church's Ann Perry-- we need to double, triple, and quadruple our numbers for Mar. 7th and beyond!...

Don't forget-- fact is that over 60% of Americans say the very top way to tackle the federal budget deficit is to tax the wealthy a bit more(!)...

[Reuters Jan. 3rd: "Most Americans Say Tax Rich To Balance Budget: Poll"
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/03/us-usa-taxes-poll-idUSTRE7022AK20110103 ]

Pass it on...

Joel
444-0599/876-2488
joeltyner@earthlink.net

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From http://www.wcax.com/global/story.asp?s=14023366 ...

[VT's Leahy, Sanders, Welch raising hell 'bout this-- why not Hinchey, Gibson, Hayworth, Schumer, and Gillibrand?]

"Vt. Delegation Takes Aim at Proposed LIHEAP Cuts"

Washington D.C. - February 14, 2011

Vermont's congressional delegation is taking on President Obama over home heating assistance.

The President's budget plan is expected to cut funding for the five billion dollar Low Income Home Energy Assistance program in half -- reversing the doubling in spending that the program received in 2008.

Vermont's congressional delegation opposes the cuts -- saying more people are in need and energy costs are on the rise.

"When you have 17 below zero you don't say, 'Gosh it'd be comfortable to have heat.' You say, 'We gotta have heat or we're gonna die,'" said Sen. Patrick Leahy.

"This Senator will do everything he can to make sure that that budget is not balanced on the backs of the weak, the vulnerable, the sick and the old," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.

About 20-thousand Vermont households benefit from LIHEAP.

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From http://www.CBPP.org/ ...

CBPP Statement: February 14, 2011
For Immediate Release
Statement: Robert Greenstein, Executive Director, on the President's Budget Proposal

The budget includes a number of hard choices. Its five-year freeze on overall funding for non-security discretionary programs - which would save $400 billion over ten years - includes an array of deep cuts, such as a 50 percent cut in the community services block grant and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). It includes other hard choices within programs even when not cutting overall funding, such as eliminating Pell Grant assistance to help low-income students afford summer courses in order to limit program costs while maintaining the maximum Pell Grant award.

The President proposes to return LIHEAP to its 2008 funding level on the grounds that home energy prices are much lower now than when Congress substantially increased LIHEAP funding in response to a rise in those prices. But, the Energy Department's own price forecasts indicate that home energy prices in the winter of 2012 will be back to their levels in the winter of 2008 and higher than in any year since then as well as in the years before 2008. The price of home heating oil is projected to be almost twice its 2000-2007 average; residential electricity almost 30 percent higher, and residential natural gas over 10 percent higher. While these prices will still be lower than at the peak of the price spike that occurred after the winter of 2008, the number of low-income Americans is much higher now- the number of people living in poverty is expected to be about 15 percent greater in 2012 than it was in 2008.

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Most Americans Say Tax Rich To Balance Budget: Poll

NEW YORK | Mon Jan 3, 2011 11:15am EST

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/03/us-usa-taxes-poll-idUSTRE7022AK20110103

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Most Americans think the United States should raise taxes for the rich to balance the budget, according to a 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair poll released on Monday.

President Barack Obama last month signed into law a two-year extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millions of Americans, including the wealthiest, in a compromise with Republicans.

Republicans, who this week take control of the House of Representatives, want to extend all Bush-era tax cuts "permanently" for the middle class and wealthier Americans. They are also demanding spending cuts to curb the $1.3 trillion deficit.

Sixty-one percent of Americans polled would rather see taxes for the wealthy increased as a first step to tackling the deficit, the poll showed.

The next most popular way -- chosen by 20 percent -- was to cut defense spending.

Four percent would cut the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly, and 3 percent would cut the Social Security retirement program, the poll showed.

Asked which part of the world they would fix first, the largest proportion of respondents -- 36 percent -- chose Washington, compared with 23 percent who picked the Middle East and 14 percent who chose Haiti.

The poll included a random sample of 1,067 adults across the United States from November 29 to December 2. The margin of error may be plus or minus 3 percentage points, 60 Minutes/Vanity Fair said.

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From http://www.DemocracyNow.org/ ...

Obama's $3.7 Trillion Budget Calls for Military Spending Increases and Deep Cuts to Social Service Programs

President Obama has unveiled a budget plan seeking to trim the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating some 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education, while increasing military spending and funding for the construction of nuclear power plants. Announcing his $3.7 trillion proposal, Obama touted his previously stated pledge to freeze funding for domestic programs outside of the military for five years. Obama's plan includes two modest tax hikes for banks and oil companies. It also calls for ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in 2013 and returning the estate tax to its higher 2009 levels. For analysis of Obama's proposed budget, we are joined by John Nichols, Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama has unveiled a budget plan seeking to trim the federal deficit by cutting or eliminating over 200 federal programs, many dedicated to social services and education. The $3.7 [trillion] proposal would cut funding in half for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which subsidizes heating costs for low-income Americans. It also calls for cutting $300 million from community development block grants and limiting an expansion of the Pell grant program for low-income college students.

Announcing the proposal, Obama touted his previously stated pledge to freeze funding for domestic programs outside of the military for five years.

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: As a start, I've called for a freeze on annual domestic spending over the next five years. This freeze would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, bringing this kind of spending-domestic discretionary spending-to its lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was president. Let me repeat that. Because of our budget, this share of spending will be at its lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president. That level of spending is lower than it was under the last three administrations, and it will be lower than it was under Ronald Reagan. Now, some of the savings will come through less waste and more efficiency.

AMY GOODMAN: Obama's plan includes two modest tax hikes for banks and oil companies. It also calls for ending the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans in 2013 and returning the estate tax to its higher 2009 levels. But it comes less than two months after Obama signed into law a measure that temporarily extended the tax cuts and reduced the estate tax, adding over $500 billion to the federal deficit. According to the White House, the deficit will reach a record $1.6 trillion next year.

The Pentagon meanwhile will see its first spending reduction since the 9/11 attacks, but only at modest levels. The budget allots $553 billion for the Pentagon's regular spending-$12 billion less than what the military expected, but still three percent higher over fiscal year 2011. Another $118 billion is earmarked for war-time spending.

For analysis of Obama's proposed budget, I'm joined now by John Nichols, the Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine. He's joining us from Madison, Wisconsin.
John, welcome to Democracy Now! What stands out for you about the proposed budget?

JOHN NICHOLS: An awful lot does, Amy. I'm pretty disappointed in it. The Catholic Church has always said that budgets are moral documents and that a budget tells us what a government, what a political entity, deems to be most important. And the unsettling thing to me about this budget is that a Democratic president is proposing an expansion of military spending-a substantial expansion of military spending. He's also proposing to dramatically increase the amount of U.S. government support for the building of nuclear power plants, for all sorts of initiatives that we thought had been settled, old issues.

At the same time, there are dramatic cuts in humanitarian programs and, well, in programs that we think of as basic social services. The LIHEAP program, which is Low Income Heating [Home Energy] Assistance, really, really vital program for people in the northern tier of the United States, is going to take an absolutely dramatic cut. And that cut's important, Amy, because that's going to have to be made up someplace, and if the federal government is not funding it, that money is going to have to come from state, county and municipal governments that are already incredibly hard hit. So it's a brutal attack, frankly. Also, I think the messing with the Pell grants-

AMY GOODMAN: Let me go to-John, let me go to the White House budget director Jacob Lew, who detailed the budget proposal Monday in Washington. Boston Globe reporter Donovan Slack questioned Lew about the 50 percent cut to the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

DONOVAN SLACK: What would the President say to a low-income elderly person in Massachusetts who can't afford to pay their heating bill? Why are you investing in wireless and not helping her pay her bill?

JACOB LEW: You're asking why we make a reduction in the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. And I have to tell you, this is a very hard cut. This is a cut that has real impact. It's a program that's done an enormous amount of good for an enormous number of people. It was never meant to be an entitlement program. It was meant to be a grant program that the states administered. Its funding level has fluctuated based on needs. Balancing our fiscal challenges and the funding change from 2008 to now, we made the tough decision. And, you know, we have said in our documents in the budget that, you know, we will keep our eye on where prices go and what need in the future is, but we can't just kind of cruise at a historic high spending level when we're trying to make these very difficult savings.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jacob Lew. Your response, John?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, I grew up in a cold climate. As a kid, I used to walk to school in 20-below-zero weather. And you knew the kids who came from homes that were low income, that were struggling to pay those bills. And the LIHEAP program is not some sort of, you know, easy-going benefit that the government throws out if it's got a little extra money. It's life and death. This is something that decides whether people can heat their homes in frigid climates. It's also something that really decides whether communities can maintain their services. Remember, we're talking about places that don't have a choice on whether you're going to use home heating oil, whether you're going to use heating oil to heat your schools and your community centers. You have to do it. And so, for the Obama administration to go here, I think, is a very bad signal.

And frankly, I think it's hugely cynical, because I think the President and his people believe that this is one issue where the Congress will feel forced to find the money. So, instead of the White House making the tough choices, you see a situation where they're punting it over. I find it very disappointing, as I do an awfully lot of the social service and education cuts in this budget. They seem to be designed to send symbolic messages about some notion that the President is willing to make cuts rather than doing the right thing, which is to say there are some programs that we simply will not cut, because they're life-and-death programs, and they're also essential programs to a civil society.

AMY GOODMAN: And how would you compare the cuts to the more than 200 federal programs involving social services and education to what we're seeing at the Pentagon?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, it's just horrifying, Amy. You know, one of the most frustrating things is how our media covers budgets. And it is, frankly, a repetition of spin. And so, so much of the media reported yesterday that the White House was proposing $70 to $80 billion worth of cuts in Pentagon spending. What that really is is Secretary Gates saying, "Here are some things that we don't think we need." At the end of the day, however, there are not cuts in military spending. This is an expansion of Pentagon spending at a dramatic level, three to five percent, depending on how you measure it.

And the important thing is, here you have President Obama saying that they've gotten down to the lowest level of domestic spending, domestic discretionary spending, since the Eisenhower era. That certainly sounds good as a sound bite, but understand what that means. It means that now Pentagon spending, defense spending, is a dramatically higher level of what our budget goes to. And I wish President Obama would remember what Dwight Eisenhower said about defense spending versus domestic spending. Dwight Eisenhower said, every time you buy a bomb, every time you pay for a bullet, that's money that comes out of building a school or putting a roof on a house. I just think the President is making a lot of wrong choices here.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break. When we come back, we're going to stay with John, and we'll be joined by a Wisconsin teacher. A quite remarkable speech by the Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who is threatening to call out the National Guard if there's any unrest. He has unveiled a plan to strip state employees of their right to collective bargaining. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.

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From http://www.FireDogLake.com/ ...

Dear Poor People, Thank You for Going Without Heat So We Can Buy Another Week of War

By: Jon Walker Tuesday February 15, 2011 7:19 am
It is important to put budget issues in perspective, so I have a simple request that President Obama, the top members of his administration, and his allies in Congress send a hand written version of this letter to constituents:

Dear low-income American,

I know times are tough. I know many of you saw your savings and home values hurt by Wall Street recklessness. I also know that, with official unemployment above 9 percent, it is tough to find a job, and many have been forced to choose part-time employment that lacks benefits. But as a result of extending the Bush tax cuts for millionaires, the budget deficit has grown.

So, despite your problems, you are going to be "asked" to sacrifice. Your president is planning to cut $2.6 billion from Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), which helps people afford keeping their homes warm during the winter, despite the fact that due to the economic downturn the number of poor people needing help has increased significantly.

As a result of your going without heat next winter, we will be able to afford almost one whole week of fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which cost about $468 million a day. Although when you add in the many hidden costs like increased long-term veteran's health care due to the conflicts, your sacrifice is probably only really going to cover maybe half a week.

I hope you understand that when we had to choose between providing basic necessities to our citizens or fighting about five more days in Iraq and Afghanistan because of [insert newest justification here], we clearly just had to choose the wars over you.

Sincerely,

Democrats in Washington

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From http://www.TheNation.com/ ...

Debunking Deficit Hysteria
Ari Berman
February 15, 2011

As John McCain used to say, it's time for a little straight talk. Here's mine: Americans don't care about the deficit. That's not to say that the public won't be angry if the country goes broke, defaults on its loans or gets swallowed up by China. But poll after poll shows that Americans care far more about lowering the unemployment rate than lowering our national deficit and debt. The views of the public happen to be directly at odds with the political and media class in Washington, who are practically foaming at the mouth these days while urging the Obama administration to get "serious" about cutting popular and long-establishment entitlement programs, like Social Security and Medicare.

One example of the public point of view: in a CBS News poll immediately after the 2010 election, which supposedly resulted in a Tea Party mandate, 56 percent of Americans ranked the economy and jobs as their top priority for the new Congress, while only 4 percent named the deficit. In mid-January, CBS News and the New York Times once again asked: "Which of the following do you think is the most important thing for Congress to concentrate on right now?" Forty-three percent of Americans chose job creation, compared to 14 percent for the federal budget deficit. Perhaps the administration possesses polling showing that moderate Republican soccer moms in Cincinnati prioritize the deficit above all else, but the rest of the country does not.

Yet the only thing anybody in Washington wants to talk about are cuts, cuts, cuts. As I wrote yesterday, it's astonishing that at a time of 9 percent unemployment, neither party is laying out a roadmap for how to put people back to work and lift the country out of its economic morass. Someone is going to get punished in 2012 for this. Don't say we didn't warn you!

My colleague Chris Hayes laid out the case against deficit-mania in a Nation article last year entitled, "Deficits of Mass Destruction." Wrote Chris:

Nearly the entire deficit for this year and those projected into the near and medium terms are the result of three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession. The solution to our fiscal situation is: end the wars, allow the tax cuts to expire and restore robust growth. Our long-term structural deficits will require us to control healthcare inflation the way countries with single-payer systems do.

In his press conference today, Obama said that our current deficit is the result of "a series of decisions over the past decade." What he didn't say-and should have-was that it's almost entirely George W. Bush's fault. Bush inherited a record surplus and passed on to Obama a record deficit-the product of giant tax cuts for the rich in 2001 and 2003, a needless war in Iraq and an aimless quagmire in Afghanistan, a drastic expansion of Medicare designed principally to benefit the health insurance industry, and an economic crisis spurred on by reckless speculation and non-existent regulatory enforcement. Yet by appointing a conservative Republican and a corporate Democrat to head his deficit commission, Obama empowered the deficit hawks who wrongly claim that both parties are equally to blame for the current deficit, and who disturbingly advocate cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the only "responsible" long-term solution. Already the conventional wisdom in Washington posits that Obama's budget did not cut enough. At Obama's press conference today, only April Ryan of American Urban Radio asked the president whether such cuts would imperil the country's path to economic recovery.

Where is the alternative economic vision? As Paul Krugman noted yesterday, the president "has effectively given up on the idea that the government can do anything to create jobs in a depressed economy. In effect, although without saying so explicitly, the Obama administration has accepted the Republican claim that stimulus failed, and should never be tried again." Obama can spend all the time he wants talking about the deficit and working with Republicans to try to lower it, but if his administration continues to be AWOL on job creation, it's not hard to figure who'll get the blame for ignoring what the public so clearly wants.

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From http://www.CommonDreams.org/ ...

Left is Livid over Budget Safety Net Cuts
Published on Tuesday, February 15, 2011 by CN

by Charles Riley

NEW YORK -- It doesn't come as a shock that Republicans aren't thrilled with President Obama's budget proposal. But Democrats aren't exactly jumping for joy either.

Obama's budget targets community block grants, a program that helps low-income people pay their energy bills, and the popular Pell grant program to aid college students. All are part of the social safety net Democrats often fight to protect.

And that has the left howling.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal organization that boasts 700,000 members, took Obama to task before the budget was even officially released.

"Proposing even more tax breaks for Wall Street banks while slashing and burning necessary government programs is right-wing radicalism, and no Democratic president should be part of it," the group said in a statement.

Obama -- who worked for years as a community organizer -- acknowledged that some of the programs facing cuts are personally important to him.

"This budget freeze will require some tough choices," Obama said Monday. "It will mean cutting things that I care deeply about."

Obama went on lament the loss in funding for community action programs in low-income neighborhoods and community development block grants.
"But if we are going to walk the walk when it comes to fiscal discipline, these kinds of cuts will be necessary," he said.

In a move that is sure to anger Democrats from cold-weather states, the administration proposed cutting $2.5 billion from a program that helps low-income people pay their energy bills during periods of extreme weather.

The administration argues that it is merely reducing funding to 2008 levels to account for lower energy prices. But the American Gas Association, an industry group that represents natural gas companies, predicts 3.2 million households, and 9 million individuals, would be affected by the cut.

Obama is also asking Congress to scale back a community service grant program, and cut a community development program that funds projects such as housing, sewers and streets, and economic development. The two reductions will save around $650 million.

Some parts of a popular education grant program are on the chopping block. The budget proposed eliminating Pell grants for summer school, and making interest on federal loans for graduate students build up during school; currently, the interest tab doesn't start running until after graduation.

The administration said that those cuts would help preserve the maximum Pell grant of $5,500.
Of course, all of Obama's proposed cuts will have to make it through an arduous budget process before becoming law. For some Democrats, that offers little solace.

"The budget proposal from President Obama is right from the Republican plan," Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., a Democrat from Obama's home state of Illinois said in a statement. "As the president, he should be the last line of defense for the most vulnerable Americans, instead of the first one to cut."