The Fake Budget Crisis

Both President Obama and the Republican Congress are united on at least one thing – federal programs that help most Americans must be cut, and no amount of increased taxation for the rich will change that.

But in the wealthiest country in the world, one that spends almost as much on war as the rest of the planet combined, there is plenty of money for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Indeed, many much poorer countries have social services that Americans only dream about – free or virtually free higher education, quality public transportation, free health care, well-funded funded maternity leave and child care.

Watch as Holly James, a researcher on public and private investments, and the Gay Liberation Network’s Andy Thayer discuss what likely will be the single largest attack on social service programs since the Great Depression. See also Thayer’s recent Huffington Post column, “The Fake Budget Crisis,” here.

Originally broadcast December 14, 2012