Virginia’s Third District Congressman Robert “Bobby” Scott, a Democrat, joined the chorus of Representatives who voted against the recently pass legislation which allowed the Congress and the White House to avoid going over the fiscal cliff on New Year’s Day. Scott said the legislation would add trillion of dollars to the existing federal deficit and may force legislators to cut the budgets of various social safety net programs supporting the poor and elderly to pay for the continuation of the Bush era tax cuts for people earning below $450,000. --- Not only does the legislation end the Bush era tax cuts for people earning above $450.000 a year, it also ends the federal tax holiday so there will be higher payroll taxes. There will be a delay in the automatic and drastic cuts to social programs or the defense budget for at least two months and it does not raise the debt ceiling, which President Obama wants the Congress to tackle on its next month. It does extend the federal unemployment insurance for another year for some of the 12 million people still looking for work. Scott outlined his position, highlighting that it adds some $3.9 trillion dollars to the national deficit. “So how are we going to pay for all these new tax cuts,” Scott told the New Journal and Guide the day after the House voted to pass the bill. ”The only option we have is to cut funding for Social Security, Medicaid, education, transportation and defense.” --- Dr. Wilhelmina Leigh, a senior research assistant at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies agrees that restructuring the Social Security and Medicare programs would be an option to bolster fiscal standing, but she does agree with privatizing it. “I think that the Congressman took a principled plan,” said Leigh. “Once they revisit this issue they should consider raising taxes or changing how Social Security is funded and administered to strengthen it.”
Read more at the New Journal and Guide.
