American Legislative Exchange Council goals

These are quotes from the interview with Jared Bernstein (link below.) My contention is that the ultra-conservative extremists in Congress truly believe in gutting the social programs we all depend on at some point in our lives. Go to www.alec.org and read their three guiding principles - Limited Government, Free Markets, Federalism. Everything we see going on in state legislatures around the country and in the U.S. Congress can be traced back to those principles. The ultra-conservative extremists have worked their way into power at all levels of government over the past 40 years. They are very well organized and well funded. We are kidding ourselves if we believe, as Bernstein says, that members of Congress will do the right thing when push comes to shove. President Obama lives under that spell too. Anyone who knows the engine of power behind what happened during the G W Bush administration can see clearly that these ultra-conservative extremists really DO want to make government small enough to "drown it in a bathtub" (Grover Norquist.) They created huge budget deficits on purpose so they could use that as an excuse to gut social programs and public education. And they are willing to let the U.S. go into default to make a point. To them, that will be the cleansing of the American spirit and the rebirth of their vision of what the country was meant to be. Go to the ALEC website (American Legislative Exchange Council) and get involved. The country you save may be your own. And, no, you can't say you are too busy or not interested in politics. Politicians control EVERYTHING that happens in your daily life, the air you breathe, the water you drink, the schools your kids go to, the safety of the food you eat, the peace of mind knowing you can call 911 if needed. If you let the ultra-conservative extremists make all these decisions, life will be wonderful for 2% of the population and miserable for the rest of us.
Susan C


Because, if you actually want to make a serious dent in the budget deficit, and you do it all on the spending side, you're going to have to gut government functions to a point where you do much more harm than good. You’ll cut way too deeply into Medicaid, into Medicare potentially, and those cuts will end up significantly reducing the economic security of retirees, and weakening a safety net that's already barely holding it together.

That's the moral case; is there an economic case, too?

Yes. If you implement aggressive spending cuts too soon, you'll turn a frazzled recovery into a double-dip recession. If you implement solely spending cuts as your solution to the budget crunch in the medium- or long-term, you'll end up restructuring programs that vulnerable people depend on, such that you'll worsen our poverty and inequality problems, which are already much too large.




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Jared Bernstein on the Phony Debt-Ceiling Debate | Rolling Stone Politics | RS Politics Daily | Rolling Stone Writers and Edit