MoveOn's 'Big Mike' Breaks Down The Budget Battles: Wealth Vs. People

[Cross-posted at Crooks and Liars.]

[YouTube here.]

Big Mike -- MoveOn.org's "Break It Down" guy -- is kind of a rationalist response to Glenn Beck: He too uses blackboards, etc., to explain seemingly complex issues. But unlike Beck, who actually makes things out to be much more dense, murky, and inexplicable than they really are (not to mention inventing things that never were), Mike has the gift of taking complex subjects and actually helping ordinary people understand them.

So I every much enjoyed his latest "Break It Down" installment -- this time on the ongoing federal-budget battles. It really is about the nation's Top 1 percent income earners against the rest of us -- and it's going to become even more intense:

And all of this fighting is just over this year's budget. Next year's budget is where things get really crazy.

Because even though taxes for the rich are the lowest they have been in generations, the Republicans want to cut them even further, so millionaires and billionaires are paying 25% instead of 35%.

But where are they going to get the trillions of dollars they need to do that?

Their ideas are fairly simple: Slash $350 billion from things like food stamps, education, training, employment, Cut another $400 billion from programs that help low-income families. Oh, and get rid of Medicare.

Yeah, almost forgot about that. They're going to take away Medicare, give seniors vouchers, and throw them on the mercy of Big Insurance. Because when I think compassion, I think Big Insurance.

So if you or your aging parents actually depend on Medicare, they can look forward to a future where they can choose between buying their meds….or eating.

If we want to get serious about shrinking the deficit, it won't happen on the backs of the middle class that’s already being squeezed.

He actually might have made good use of another chart MoveOn recently published: