AFL-CIO boss Trumka says 'fiscal cliff' doesn’t exist, just rhetoric

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11/15/12, “Trumka’s Denial Of Budget Realities Suggests Ugly Plans,” IBD Editorial

“AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has declared there’s no fiscal cliff and any address of runaway government spending is just “a manufactured crisis.“ Is Big Labor’s big boss just plain stupid? Or is there a darker agenda?

‘Take what the media are calling ‘the fiscal cliff.’ There is no fiscal cliff!” Trumka thundered at a National Mediation Board Conference Thursday, sounding like an alcoholic pleading for one last swig well before he hits rock bottom.

But his ravings are at odds with reality, given that a fiscal cliff (in Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s coinage) is coming whether Trumka likes it or not….

Trumka’s still denying reality. “What we’re facing,” he said Thursday, “is an obstacle course within a manufactured crisis that was hastily thrown together in response to inflated rhetoric about our federal deficit.

“But all the deficit chatter has distracted us from our real crisis — the immediate crisis of 23 million unemployed or underemployed workers. It’s time to protect Social Security benefits. It’s time to protect Medicare and Medicaid benefits. And it’s time to raise taxes for the richest 2%,” he went on.

In short, Trumka is arguing that there’s no such thing as too much government spending, that deficits don’t matter and that entitlements cannot be cut. Such denialist thinking is beyond irresponsible in the face of a $16 trillion debt, highest on global record and a sign of an irrational agenda often followed by would-be tyrants.

Trumka is trying to intimidate congressional Democrats into intransigence on a debt deal with Republicans to restore the solvency of the U.S. Instead, he wants them to stand fast on the idea that the debt, deficit and entitlements can be addressed simply by taxing higher-income earners who already account for more than half of federal income-tax revenue.

This is the kind of irresponsible thinking that has triggered riots in Greece and Spain — a belief that the money is there and only the meanness of austerity is keeping the common man from his share.”…via Lucianne



“The AFL-CIO’s Richard Trumka, center, accompanied by MoveOn.org’s Justin Ruben and SEIU’s Mary Kay Henry, speaks to reporters outside the White House on Thursday.” AP



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