The "debt ceiling" and the war on social programs
The Socialist Program with Brian Becker
The Socialist Program
4.7 • 587 Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2023
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On today's episode Walter Smolarek and Prof. Richard Wolff discuss the so-called “debt ceiling” government borrowing limit. As the countdown begins to a default, right wing politicians are using the situation as leverage and demanding huge cuts to some of the most essential social programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Will these crucial safety net programs survive?
Professor Richard Wolff is an author & co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work. You can find his work at rdwolff.com.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The so-called debt ceiling is approaching with the U.S. government technically hitting its borrowing limit last Thursday. |
| 0:08.2 | As the countdown begins to an actual default, right-wing politicians are using the situation as leverage and demanding huge cuts to some of the most essential social programs, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. |
| 0:22.5 | Will these crucial safety net programs survive? |
| 0:26.3 | We need a new system. |
| 0:28.0 | We need a new society. |
| 0:29.9 | We need to demand that which may have sounded impossible even a few weeks ago, but is not |
| 0:35.1 | only realizable, but an imperative business. I'm Walter Smalerick, filling in for Brian Becker. biggest stories relating to the economy, the state of the working class, and the crimes of |
| 1:11.0 | big business. I'm Walter Smolerick, filling in for Brian Becker. The Socialist Program brings |
| 1:16.1 | you content three days a week thanks to the support of our patrons at patreon.com slash |
| 1:21.1 | to the Socialist Program. We appreciate all of your support and encourage you to become a patron |
| 1:26.0 | today if you enjoy listening to the show. |
| 1:29.2 | Richard Wolfe is the co-founder of the organization Democracy at Work and the author of many |
| 1:33.3 | books, the latest being The Sickness is the System, when capitalism fails to save us from pandemics or itself. |
| 1:40.1 | Check out all of his work at rd.wolf.com. Wellcom well professor wolf let me just start off by asking you |
| 1:47.3 | this what is the debt ceiling what is this phenomenon that we're talking about in the first place |
| 1:52.6 | well it's a minor ritual of the united states congress andidency been around for quite a while. |
| 2:03.8 | And here's basically what it is. |
| 2:07.2 | A government has to raise money in order to spend money. |
| 2:11.6 | The United States government has been called upon by its people over its entire history to spend all kinds of money, |
| 2:21.9 | to spend money to maintain a military apparatus, spend money to maintain foreign embassies, |
| 2:29.9 | that is, U.S. embassies in every other country on the face of this earth, spend money to build roads, |
| 2:37.3 | spend money to educate our young people, and so on. In order for the government to spend that |
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