OntheWilderSide

• Obama’s retreat from promises of change led to the Democrats’ sell-out and a battle to save Social Security, Medicare, collective bargaining, public broadcasting, the EPA, scientific research, and Planned Parenthood
• Green Party blasts Obama’s proposed $1 trillion cut in Medicare and Medicaid and the budget deal’s ‘tyrannical’ policies imposed on the District of Columbia, including denial of funds for abortion

Green Party leaders urged President Obama to expand his goal of raising taxes on the wealthiest tax brackets, and insisted that the key to dealing with the deficit is reversing tax cuts for the wealthy, even greater reductions in military spending, and ending the wars.  Greens strongly rejected the President’s proposal on Wednesday for $1 trillion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid.

Greens were especially critical of language in the budget deal that would impose Republican policies on the District of Columbia, outlawing the use of federal or local funds for abortion for low-income women or for needle exchange:

Alan Page, DC Statehood Green Party candidate for At-Large City Council in the April 26, 2011 special election (http://alanpagedc.com):

The White House and Congress have fulfilled Newt Gingrich’s dream of making the District a ‘laboratory’ for Republican policies.  Congress has a long history of forcing unwanted laws on DC and vetoing locally passed statutes.  After the 2008 election, President Obama and Democrats in Congress refused to act on their ability to end this outrage by granting DC statehood, even though the result would very likely have been a new Democratic vote in the House and two new Democratic votes in the Senate.  During the past decade, while the DC Statehood Green Party and other local advocates of DC democracy demanded statehood, Democrats led by Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (Ind.-Conn.) campaigned for a bill that would have given DC a single voting seat in the US House but would not have abolished federal control over DC laws, policies, and budgets.  The ‘DC Vote’ bill served only to eclipse the far greater need for genuine self-government and an end to Congress’s tyrannical rule over the District.  Under the continuing resolution passed on Friday, DC residents will suffer the brunt of the Democrats’ lack of political will.

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