The great Sequester lie

Begala writes: 'The conventional wisdom is that Republicans won't support any more tax increases and Democrats won't support any more spending cuts. That's half right.' (photo: TPM Muckraker)

By Paul Begala, The Daily Beast

25 February 13

readersupportednews.org

 
n a column on the budget, to maintain credibility with Beltway elites, I am supposed to claim the impasse is both parties' fault. It isn't. The conventional wisdom is that Republicans won't support any more tax increases and Democrats won't support any more spending cuts. That's half right.

House Democrats have proposed some sensible spending cuts: like doing away with the billions we spend subsidizing oil companies. With gas nearing $4 a gallon, does anyone really want to send taxpayers' money to the welfare queens of ExxonMobil? House Dems would also enact the Buffett rule (I prefer "Romney rule"), ending the obscenity in the tax code that lets hedge-fund managers pay a lower tax rate than their secretaries.

Not to be outdone, Senate Democrats have proposed $110 billion in spending cuts and tax increases: again, reducing oil subsidies (though not as much as the House Dems), ending the deduction businesses take for moving jobs overseas and trimming the defense budget and farm subsidies.

Finally, the White House boasts of having eliminated 77 government programs, including 16 at the Department of Education, 10 at Health and Human Services, and 4 at Labor. The president's budget calls for $30 billion in cuts to farm programs and $25 billion in savings from the post office.

The Republicans, for their part, did allow the Bush tax cuts to expire on income over $450,000, but they seem to have dug in their heels on the Romney rule and oil subsidies. They are blaming President Obama's "failed leadership" for the sequester and arguing that it was the White House that first proposed the gun-to-the-head approach. As the kids say, whatevs. The Democrats have come to the table with spending cuts. Will the Republicans join them and support some tax increases? Um, no. "Just last month," House Speaker John Boehner said, "The president got his higher taxes on the wealthy, and he's already back for more." True. But there is still some very low-hanging fruit on the revenue side. Republicans ought to at least embrace the Romney rule-if for no other reason than to punish Mitt for running such a lame campaign.

Meanwhile, some congressional Republicans are taking a break from complaining about government spending to complain about the lack of government spending. As Politico has reported, Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker is worried about cuts to the Army Corps of Engineers, Maine Republican Sen. Susan Collins is fretting over potential job losses at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, and John McCain has continued his longstanding opposition to a sequester, bringing it home by telling his fellow Arizonans, "They make the Apache helicopter in Mesa, Arizona. If they cut back, it would have to be affected there."

I would take it further. The new Tea Party senator from Texas, Ted Cruz, says, "I think we have to be prepared to go so far as to shut the government down if we don't get some serious policies to stop the out-of-control spending to tackle the debt." OK, let's start by shutting down federal spending in Texas. Federal funds account for 32 percent of the Lone Star State's budget. Oh, and how about Fort Hood? At 340 square miles, it is the biggest Army base in the free world and the largest single employer in Texas. All that federal spending must be sapping the souls of my fellow Texans. So let's move Fort Hood to, oh, say, Nevada. Sen. Harry Reid actually believes in federal investments, and the Nevada desert might provide good terrain for Fort Hood's tanks.

This could be fun. Oklahoma so hates Obama's big spending that every single county in the state voted for Mitt Romney. Oklahoma has twice the percentage of federal employees than the U.S. average, and Okies get $1.35 back from Washington for each dollar they pay in taxes. So close the massive FAA center in Oklahoma City. Move it to Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco district, where they love big government.

Two years ago I made a similar argument about Kentucky, calling on Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul to put the Bluegrass State in detox for its addiction to local pork. No such luck. But perhaps the principle can apply to the sequester: enforce it only in states whose elected representatives won't support the taxes needed to fund the spending they want.

Politics in DC - While the kids play...

By Bob Edwards

Former Payson Mayor

Former Michigan Legislator

 

 Watching politics in DC is like watching kids playing make believe. The world is heading toward a financial cliff with a national debt of $16.5 trillion plus $123 trillion in unfunded liabilities yet they continue to spend at the level that will add over a trillion per year in additional debt.

Washington clearly has a serious leadership void. Neither Obama, Reid, McConnell, Boehner nor Pelosi have demonstrated the leadership capability or even the desire to cut spending. They are currently having heart attacks over the Obama 2011 sequestration proposal and making wild statements of the disasters that will occur if the sequester plan is allowed to go forward.

It is fun and easy to use a credit card to spend wildly when we can just borrow on the same credit card to pay the bill while continuing to spend. However, the carnival comes crashing down when the amount left to borrow runs out.

The U.S. government, on the other hand, has the ability to delay the crash by printing money, as they have been doing at an alarming rate, but the crash will come, as will wild inflation. We should ask Argentina and Brazil how inflation rates ranging as high as 3000% and 5000% per year worked for them...money became meaningless and the cost of needed products outpaced paychecks.

But that could never happen here because we’re the United States, right?  Not really. China and other countries are already showing signs of wanting to dump U.S. dollars (the world standard) and pulling out their gold from the U.S.  Just being beholden to China, a country that does not have our best interest in mind, is a bit insane.

While the pseudo DC leaders are gnashing their teeth over the sequestration, we should keep in mind that the sequestration is simply tip money...while we are heading for the cliff we are not even balancing the current budget.

I understand we elected these folks and we have the right to have as bad a government as we want, but it would be a bit more comforting if they showed any indication that they actually have a clue.

Is sequestration a crisis that will cause the world as we know it to disappear?  Not really, just a really small step toward delaying an pending economic crash.

Earth's date with an asteroid

By Daniel Stolte, University Communications | February 12, 2013

The UA has held a long-standing love for asteroids, from pioneering the search for potentially hazardous space rocks before NASA did to sending a spacecraft to one to scoop up a sample.

 

Artist's impression of asteroid 2012 DA14 as it whizzes past Earth the day after Valentine's Day. (Illustration: NASA)

Scientists at the University of Arizona have had a long love with rocks whizzing through space, and the record-setting asteroid that hurtled toward the Earth before veering off into space on Feb. 15 is no different.

 No asteroid of this size – half a football field across – has been known to make such a close pass since record-keeping observations began in the 1990s, according to Don Yeomans of NASA’s Near-Earth-Object Observation Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

The stony asteroid, 2012 DA14, likely originated in the solar system’s asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It will pass Earth at a distance of about 17,200 miles or 27,680 kilometers, closer than geostationary satellite orbit, although experts consider a crash extremely unlikely.

"As we keep getting better at finding these things, we discover that such close approaches happens more frequently than you might think," said Ed Beshore, deputy principal investigator of the UA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which will send a spacecraft to an asteroid, scoop up a sample and bring it back to Earth for study.

Although the "Valentine asteroid" definitely won't impact our planet this time, it serves as a reminder that such Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs, have slammed into the Earth in the past and will do so in the future. Yeomans said an object the size of DA14 streaks down from the sky about every 1,200 years on average.

"NEOs are obviously special because they are hazards to Earth," Beshore said. "Over the long term, NEOs either collide with the sun or a planet, or get thrown out of the solar system by a close gravitational approach."

"Something is responsible for resupplying the solar system with these objects, and this is the subject of much study," he added. "Collision threat aside, NEOs are scientifically interesting – their close approaches to Earth afford excellent opportunities to study them in detail."

Observing campaigns will study the asteroid with various instruments including NASA’s Goldstone radio telescope in California. From these observations, scientists will learn more about its orbit, rotation and physical characteristics.

"It's not often that we get to observe such a small asteroid at close range," said Carl Hergenrother, OSIRIS-REx Science Team member and coordinator of the Target Asteroids! citizen science program. "This object is small and fast but relatively bright – it offers professionals and amateurs a great chance to collect data and test their observing skills. I will be on the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope the night of the close approach obtaining light curve and color observations."

"Right now, we have about a 100-year window of certainty of not getting hit by any NEO we have discovered to date," Beshore said. "Beyond that, we can’t say what the long-term future holds for these objects. It is in everybody’s interest to improve our ability to predict their behavior."

Through repeated and concerted observations, professional and amateur astronomers alike are continually refining the orbits of asteroids, he said.

"One of the best things we can do is get radar images," he added. "They allow us to measure an asteroid's distance to within a few tens of feet, which is not possible to do with optical instruments. Radar images also allow us to map these rocks, giving us an idea of what they look like. What shape are they? Is their surface smooth or covered with boulders? How fast are they rotating?"

"The goal is to lengthen that window out farther into the future."

An important piece in this effort is NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, led by the UA, even long before it embarks on its journey to its target asteroid, 1999 RQ36. While the major scientific objective of the mission is to bring back a sample of the asteroid for study here on Earth, OSIRIS-REx scientists are also working to understand a phenomenon that applies to all asteroids, large or small, called the Yarkovsky effect.

As an asteroid travels along its orbit, it absorbs light and heat from the sun. As it rotates, it radiates some of that energy back into space. Over time, this re-radiated energy nudges the object off its trajectory ever so slightly, making its course more difficult to predict, especially over long timespans into the future.

"By observing asteroid RQ36 from Earth, we have already obtained a much better understanding of the Yarkovsky effect. We hope to refine our measurements as part of the OSIRIS-REx mission and improve our orbital predictions, even for asteroids that are slightly different in size or composition," Beshore explained. "With the data, we expect to refine our computer simulations and make them more accurate."

A close encounter like that of DA14 puts observers in a prime seat to follow the space rock as it interacts with Earth. As the asteroid races toward Earth from the south and streaks high across the Indian Ocean, the Earth’s gravitational field grabs it and flings it off into space in a so-called gravitational slingshot.

According to Beshore, objects larger than about 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) are still being discovered, even though much less frequently than only seven or eight years ago.

"NASA is developing concepts to improve our sensitivity so we can detect objects that are smaller, further away, or both."

Scientists at the UA started looking for asteroids before NASA did. SPACEWATCH and Catalina Sky Survey are two research programs at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory dedicated to the study of small objects like asteroids and comets. 
Founded in 1980 by the late Tom Gehrels and Robert McMillan, who is now its principal investigator, SPACEWATCH aims to find objects that might pose a hazard to Earth and gain a better understanding of how the solar system came to be.

The Catalina Sky Survey, begun and led by LPL senior staff scientist Steve Larson, is a NASA-supported project to discover and catalog Earth-approaching and potentially hazardous asteroids.

"In more recent years, the UA’s Catalina Sky Survey has taken a leading role in discovering these objects, and now we're sending a spacecraft under the OSIRIS-REx mission," said Beshore, who directed the survey from 2009 to early 2012.

DA14 is about one-tenth the size of asteroid 1999 RQ36, which the OSIRIS-REx mission will visit in 2018 and from which it will return a sample to Earth in 2023. 

Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for the OSIRIS-REx mission, believes 1999 RQ36 may hold important clues to the formation of the solar system.

"We think 1999 RQ36 is a primitive object, relatively unchanged since the beginning of the solar system. The chance to examine a sample in laboratories here on Earth may lend important clues to the source of organic materials and water – both critical to our understanding of how life arose on Earth, and the prospects for finding it elsewhere."

Furthermore, OSIRIS-REx will be a pathfinder mission, Lauretta said, helping us understand the techniques and technologies needed to navigate and work in an asteroid’s microgravity environment – important preparation for dealing with a future hazard or preparing for a manned expedition to an asteroid some day.  

Time for Boomers to march again

By Dave Lindorff

This Can't Be Happening / Op-Ed

nationofchange.org

 

I’m fed up with the trashing of the Baby Boom generation.

Sure you can find plenty of scoundrels, freeloaders, charlatans and thugs who were born between 1946 and 1964, but you can find bad and lazy people in every generation. In fact, the so called “Greatest Generation” who preceded the Boomers abounds in them. That doesn’t prove anything.

What has me ticked, as someone who was born in 1949, is that the right wing has for decades been attacking my generation in particular, and has succeeded, pretty much, in portraying us Baby Boomers as self-centered, spoiled and entitled. The right has then cleverly used that deceptive image to go on and attack important programs like Social Security, Medicare, college loans, etc., by trying to divide the generations against each other, claiming that we Baby Boomers are intent on abusing, even bankrupting, those programs.

The truth is something else entirely.

The generation born after World War II in fact has been admirable and almost unique in its altruism. While our parents were either overt racists and sexists or turned a blind eye to those twin evils, and for the most part uncritically accepted the imperialist policies of the post-war US government, our generation challenged the idea of imperial war, supported the struggle of African-Americans to win voting rights and to end legal segregation and, after a struggle in our own ranks, fought for equal rights for women -- with many of the men of our age cohort joining in that struggle.

My generation did more in our personal lives and lifestyles, beginning in the 1960s and continuing on through the decades, to break down walls of religious and racial bigotry, than any before us, and we have raised children who have continued that legacy.

As for Social Security, it was our generation that has had to pay more into the system to anticipate our greater longevity and our greater numbers, paying vastly higher Social Security payroll taxes than our parents ever did. We also strongly supported the creation of Medicare in 1965, at a time when we were still more than 40 years from being able to make use of it.

We did it for the generation before us, not for ourselves. Back in 1964, when the last Boomer was being born, our parents were only paying 3.625% of their pay in FICA taxes. When my father was 60, and only a few years from retirement, he began paying 5.4%. We Boomers, meanwhile, have been paying over 6% of our income into Social Security since 1988, which means that for those of us now nearing retirement age, the 30-35 years of our working lives when we were earning our greatest amount of annual income, we were paying over 6%. into the Trust Fund. Since employers match those amounts, we were actually paying over 5% per year more of income during our working lives than our parents paid in theirs.

And the right wing -- and even some conservative Democrats -- call us selfish and entitled!

We also, far from being selfish, raised families in the face of a prolonged and deliberate corporate assault on working people that saw our unions broken, our pensions terminated, our health insurance benefits slashed, college costs for our kids inflated, and job opportunities for both ourselves and our children lost. We saw our home values crashed by greedy bankers. We are new facing a crisis and a threat as we near retirement age, not because we were self-indulgent and lazy, but because we are the victims of a colossal corporate rip-off, one supported by a corrupt right-wing political movement. This campaign has gutted the programs that several generations of labor activists and workers, including we ourselves, fought to create.

If there is anything critical that can be said about the generation born after 1946, it would be that we got so caught up in our struggles of the moment, and then in raising our families in the face of these challenges, that we have not maintained our “fuck you!” attitude towards authority, and our sense of solidarity with one another and with those who are on the outside of the society and the economy.

My sense is that most of us in the Baby Boom generation still have our basic values. We want a better, fairer, more peaceful world--a world free of imperialism, racism and sexism -- but we have lost the sense of militancy that is needed to get there.

That makes me hopeful that as our children move off onto their own, and as we get ever closer to the point that we are depending on programs like Social Security and Medicare for our survival, that we will recover that sense of urgent militancy and that “fuck you” attitude that carried us through the years of the Indochina War, of President Nixon’s Cointelpro repression, and of the Reagan-era assault on the New Deal legacy.

It is time for the Baby Boom Generation to return to its roots. For the sake of ourselves and our friends and demographic compatriots, for the sake of our children and their children, we need to recover that distrust and rejection of authority that is embedded in our generation’s DNA. We need to recall and recreate that exciting sense of community that came with standing shoulder to shoulder against the uniformed enforcers of the Establishment.

It is time to gather up our canes, our walkers and our hearing aids, to ignore our aching joints, and to again start marching and shouting: “Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers!” and “Hell No! We Won’t Go!” (peacefully and quietly into old age, that is).

STUDY: Most BPA-free plastics aren't

More than 70% of containers tested released estrogen-like chemicals. (photo: unknown)

By Elizabeth Renter, NaturalSociety

22 February 13

readersupportednews.org

hen the industry found consumers getting hip to BPA and its hormone disrupting qualities, they started looking at alternatives. While that was nice and all, the alternatives aren’t much better. In fact, some research found that mot plastics, even those that are BPA-free, still leach hormone-mimicking chemicals when exposed to normal conditions. While the research took play a couple years ago, it reminds us to think twice when using and purchasing plastics.

Despite that the industry would like you to think "BPA-Free" labels make foods safe from hormone disrupters, researchers say that simply isn't the case. They tested more than 450 different plastic containers from stores like Walmart and Whole Foods. More than 70% of them released estrogen-like chemicals.

The containers they tested included those most likely to come in contact with food. Plastic bags, baby bottles, deli containers, and reusable plastic food containers were all tested. Because they knew BPA-containers would emit hormone-disrupters, they focused on those plastics that claimed to be "BPA-free".

When exposed to saltwater and alcohol, the majority of the plastics released hormone disrupting chemicals. The number increased when they were put in the dishwasher, exposed to sunlight, or used in the microwave. These exposures are just the type that these plastics would undergo if used in your home.

"Then, you greatly increase the probability that you're going to get chemicals having estrogenic activity released," said Professor of Biology George Bittner, adding that they increased the number of containers emitting hormone disrupters to 90%.

The study didn't focus on health effects as much as the chemicals that the containers produced. Some scientists would argue that these disrupters aren't proven to do any damage to humans, only mice and rats. Others say Bittner's research isn't completely reliable. But iIf a chemical causes infertility and cancer in rats, I don't want to touch it.

However, those that have questioned BPA-effects before are welcoming the study.

"This is really helpful because they took a look at very common products," says Sonya Lunder of the Environmental Working Group.

It seems when the scientific world is presented with studies like this, we are encouraged to continue on with business as usual until they know, without a doubt, that something is 100% likely to cause cancer, illness, death, or the like. While they may be convinced our retail habits are more important than our health, I'd like to think our informed readers know otherwise.

GOP losing Sequester blame game

By Terrance Heath | February 21, 2013

ourfuture.org 

The “sequester” is a terrible idea. It will do terrible things to the economy and the lives of millions of Americans. It was a terrible idea from the beginning, when it was born of an ugly deal on the “fiscal cliff.” It will be disastrous for the country, and cost up to 1 million American jobs — in the middle of an ongoing jobs crisis. But it’s not inevitable. The sequester is a crisis manufactured by Congress. Congress can and should simply repeal it.

But for the moment, it’s looking like that’s not going to happen. Republicans are running out the clock, either out of plain ol’ meanness and anger, or because of some misguided gamble that obstruction will work this time, that Americans will blame the president for bringing the economy to a screeching halt, and the GOP will finally make Barack Obama a one-term president. The sequester is turning out to be a losing bet for the GOP.

Republicans would bear more of the blame for a failure to reach a deal on the looming federal spending cuts known as the sequester, but most Americans are tuned out of the debate and many don’t oppose allowing the cuts to go into effect.

A new survey from the Pew Research Center and USA Today — the first wide-ranging poll to look at the issue of the sequester — shows a failure to reach a deal would lead 49 percent of Americans to blame congressional Republicans and 31 percent to blame President Obama.

This isn’t all that surprising. As we noted Wednesday, Obama is much more popular than both Congress and the Republican Party, which means he’s likely to come out on top in the blame game.

As we also noted Wednesday, a big reason for that is that, while Washington is in a tizzy about the sequester, the vast majority of Americans haven’t paid much attention. Just 27 percent of Americans say they have heard “a lot” about the cuts, while 43 percent have heard “a little” and 29 percent have heard “nothing at all.” Because Americans aren’t paying attention, they revert to their overall impressions of the two sides.

It’s not as if Republicans haven’t been warned. Conservatives like David Frum and former Virginia governor and Republican National Committee chairman Jim Gilmore have told Republican leadership, “You’re going to lose this.”

“That’s the biggest problem with the Republicans” on Capitol Hill, Gilmore, a former Virginia governor, said this morning over coffee and a ham-and-egg biscuit in Alexandria. “They think spending is the most important thing. It’s not.”

He says he has urged GOP leaders to back down and compromise to prevent the so-called sequester spending cuts from going through – “I keep telling them, you’re going to lose this” – and he has strong words for congressional leaders’ focus on deficit reduction as their primary economy goal.

“Above all things,” he says, “they shouldn’t be talking about debt and deficits. Because the left’s got an answer for them.”

If the sequester happens, it is going to be next to impossible for Republicans to distance themselves from its disastrous results. First of all, prominent Republicans like Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) have been almost gleefully predicting that the sequester will happen. It was probably all Eric Cantor could do not to greedily rub his hands together when he layered out the GOP strategy on the sequester.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says he hates the sequester:

I don’t want to live with the sequester. I want reductions in spending that make sense. These indiscriminate reductions do not make sense.

But he doesn’t hate it enough to repeal it or replace it with something Democrats and Republicans can agree on. As a result, he says, Republicans will move forward with the sequester.

And we’re going to hurt a lot of people. And it’s up to the president, really, to act now.

But Cantor voted for the sequester. And for all John Boehner’s claims that the sequester “threatens U.S. national security, thousands of jobs and more,” he boasted that he got 98 percent of what he wanted out of the deal that produced it.

That’s why President Obama is still talking about the supposedly “inevitable” sequester. The president is even more popular now than he was in 2009, when he was was still fresh from his historic White House victory. On the issues, Americans are more aligned with President Obama than the GOP.

On the other hand, Americans want Republicans to “knock it off,” already. But the GOP remains haunted by what E.J. Dionne called “the ghost of the tea party,” and driven by a base too blinded by anger at President Obama to allow the Republican party to do what it’s been doing.

Maybe that’s why the GOP is doing what it’s been doing a lot of lately, where the “sequester blame game” is concerned: losing.

Where has Boomers retirement gone?

Portrait, Robert Reich, 08/16/09. (photo: Perian Flaherty)

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

21 February 13

readersupportednews.org

 
was born in 1946, just when the boomer wave began. Bill Clinton was born that year, too. So was George W. Bush, as was Laura Bush. And Ken Starr (remember him?) And then, the next year, Hillary Rodham was born. And soon Newt Gingrich (known as "Newty" as a boy). And Cher (Every time I begin feeling old I remind myself she's not that much younger.)

Why did so many of us begin coming into the world in 1946? Demographers have given this question a great deal of attention.

My father, for example, was in World War II - as were the fathers of many other early boomers. Ed Reich came home from the war, as did they. My mother was waiting for him, as were their mothers.

When it comes down to it, demographics is not all that complicated.

Fast-forward. Most of us early boomers had planned to retire around now. Those born a few years later had planned to retire in a few years.

But these plans have gone awry. First, boomer wages didn't rise as fast as we expected they would. In fact, over the last thirty years the median wage has barely budged, adjusted for inflation.

As a result, most of us haven't saved as much as we'd hoped.

Then employers scaled back our pensions. Instead of the predictable monthly benefits many of our parents got when they retired, we received "defined contribution" plans - basically, do-it-yourself pensions. Some employers initially offered to match what we socked away, but those employer matches often shrank to the vanishing point.

We nonetheless took comfort from the rising prices of our homes, and assumed they'd become modest nest eggs when we sold them and bought smaller places for retirement.

But then the housing bubble burst.

Meanwhile, whatever we'd managed to sock away in the stock market lost years of value. 

We assumed we'd at least have Social Security and Medicare. After all, we've been paying into both programs for years.

Yet both are now being eyed by deficit hawks who say the only way to avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits in future years is to limit these programs.

For example, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson have just offered another of their deficit-cutting plans - paring back Social Security's annual cost-of-living adjustment and reducing Medicare by squeezing suppliers and cutting benefits for higher-income retirees. 

So are the boomers doomed?

Not necessarily. One possible response to the aging of America, not yet on the table: Expand the number legal immigrants coming to America.

As I've noted before, the biggest reason Social Security and Medicare are projected to cost so much in future years is because America is aging so fast.

It's not just that so many boomers are planning to retire, and their bodies will wear out. It's also that seniors are living longer. And families are having fewer children.

Add it all up and the number of Americans who are working relative to the number who are retired keeps shrinking.

Forty years ago there were five workers for every retiree. Now there are just over three. By 2025, if present trends continue, there will be only two workers per retiree. There's no way just two workers will be able or willing to pay enough payroll taxes to keep benefits flowing to every retiree.

This is where immigration comes in. Most immigrants are young because the poor countries they come from are demographically the opposite of rich countries. Rather than aging populations, their populations are bursting with young people.

Yes, I know: There aren't enough jobs right now even for Americans who want and need them. But once the American economy recovers, there will be. Take a long-term view and most new immigrants to the U.S. will be working for many decades.

Foreign-born workers are now 15 percent of the nation's workforce. At the present rate of immigration, between now and 2050 immigrants and their children are projected to account for nearly all the growth of the American population under the age of 65.

Immigration reform is already on the national agenda, but we've been focusing on only one aspect of it - how to deal with undocumented workers.

We need to think more broadly, and connect the dots. One logical way to help deal with the crisis of funding Social Security and Medicare is to have more workers per retiree. And the simplest way to do that is to allow more immigrants into the United States. 

Immigration reform and entitlement reform have a lot to do with one another.

---

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers "Aftershock" and "The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, "Beyond Outrage." He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.