Friday, December 31, 2010

H.R. 6550: National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010

Kucinich has introduced a bill to fundamentally reform the American monetary system. If passed, I think it could be the most significant act of Congress ever.

Because almost nothing affects so many things as does money, monetary reform has potentially huge consequences. Due to the current fiscal crisis, certain long-unquestioned, very basic assumptions about money -- what is it? who really creates it? how is it introduced into the economy? what are the consequences? what alternatives are there? -- are receiving new attention, making real reforms at least thinkable.

The Kucinich measure holds within it the possibility of funding full employment, universal healthcare and public education, and of repairing the national infrastructure, while eliminating the Federal debt and boom and bust cycles of inflation and deflation. It promises to reduce the exploitation of people and the environment. As I said, it can affect so much, because this is about reforming the monetary system, and nothing affects so many things as does the monetary system.

Yet I am curious whether what the bill proposes -- the assumptions it questions, the simple but at first difficult-to-fathom concepts it introduces -- has any real chance of making its way into public discourse. I wonder whether it will be able, even, to get any real hearing in Congress.

There are a lot of passionate, smart and dedicated people who have shepherded this bill, and the thinking and historical awareness behind it, this far. But I don’t imagine it’s that difficult for those interests who will feel threatened to make any serious, thoughtful consideration of what it says impossible. Sometimes I wonder if a chief function of our government, media and educational systems hasn’t been to keep people distracted from every fundamental question and insight.

The full text of the bill -- it’s being called the National Emergency Employment Defense Act of 2010 (H.R. 6550) -- is available at:

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-6550

A good background piece can be downloaded at:
http://www.monetary.org/32pageexplanation.pdf