Senate Confirms Lew at Treasury
by Linda Beale
Senate Confirms Lew at Treasury
The US Senate confirmed Jacob Lew as Treasury secretary by a 71 to 26 vote (with 20 Republicans voting with Democrats) late Wednesday. See Jeremy Peters,Senate, in a more affable mode, backs Treasury nominee, New York Times (Sept. 27, 2013).
I’ve covered my reservations about Jack Lew in prior posts. Most notably, I view him as too eager to accommodate Wall Street and the GOP demands for cuts to benefits of safety-net programs, rather than standing firm. As many have pointed out, Social Security would be perfectly fine if we removed the cap so that people were paying the tax on most of their income, rather than allowing millionaires to pay on what amounts to a de minimis amount of their income. Medicare is a good program that is better at holding costs down than our overly costly privatized health care system. On Medicare, what we need is real measures to address the rent-seeking behavior of hospitals (including so-called “non-profits”) and doctors and insurance companies, not reductions to benefits.
Bernie Sanders seems to agree with me. As the Times story reports, he noted Lew’s affinity with Wall Street as a real negative.
“We need a secretary of the Treasury who does not come from Wall Street but is prepared to stand up to the enormous power of Wall Street,” Mr. Sanders said from the Senate floor. “Do I believe that Jack Lew is that person? No, I do not.”
a couple posts from Pam Martens on Jack Lew make turbo timmy look like a dimestore shoplifter..
Treasury Nominee Jack Lew’s Head-Spinning Mortgage Transactions
Who’s Behind the Curtain of Treasury Nominee Jack Lew’s Funny Money
yves follows, citing her and Bloomberg’s Jonathan Weil.
Jack Lew’s Grotesque Citi Employment Deal and the Institutionalization of Corruption
Linda
you may be right about Lew… I wouldn’t know.
but you are wrong about Social Security. Raising the cap would turn it into welfare. And then “the rich” would turn it into “welfare as we knew it.”
Social Security is the most successful anti poverty program in American history exactly because it is NOT welfare.
The rich need to pay higher taxes, but they do not need to pay higher taxes for Social Security.
FDR insisted that the workers pay for Social Security themselves, “so no damn politician could take it away from them.”
He probably hadn’t reckoned with the ignorance of the people who think they are defending Social Security by making the rich pay for it.
and though some are sick of hearing it… the workers can pay for their own Social Security by raising their payroll tax eighty cents per week per year.
and they will get the money back, with interest, when they need it most.
but give a good liberal a choice between letting the workers pay an extra eighty cents per week for their own future bread, and taxing some rich guy an extra ten thousand a year or more… because he won’t mind it, you see… they’ll go for the “tax on the rich” every time.
funny that greed and stupidity are not the sole property of “the right.”