Is the Debt Ceiling a Civil Liberties Issue?

That’s the title of an intriguing essay by Laura Murphy, the director of the ACLU’s Washington office, which looks at the consequences for civil liberties that flow from the decisions being made about the federal budget.

When it comes to civil liberties, Murphy said, budget policies have a real impact.

The ACLU has long documented policing practices that target people for loitering, walking and driving while black and brown. The social safety net – a series of federal programs that were designed to help prevent people from being plunged into abject poverty – Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and now the Affordable Care Act –may face radical restructuring because a majority in the House of Representatives says the U.S. cannot afford these programs Yet, this Congress also says that eliminating tax breaks for the wealthiest and least diverse 1 percent of our population — something that would create more revenue – is not an option.

Helping the poor and those on the brink of poverty is deemed too costly, yet Congress does not hesitate to spend nearly $700 billion on war and defense spending (with $80 billion devoted to finding an estimated 4,000 terrorists worldwide) and domestic national security, such as spying, surveillance and airport grope-downs.

And the trade-offs matter, as she explains:

As a nation we have made policy choices that allow wasteful spending on military interventions, targeted killings and drones, secret prisons abroad, border fences, funding for local police fusion centers (designed to find terrorists but too often focus on peace activists, environmentalists, and other political advocates with no history of violence), and law enforcement computer systems that don’t work.  This is in lieu of civil rights enforcement programs in the Justice Department, adequate and equal spending for public education, paying for safe and legal abortions even for military women who are raped, humane prison conditions and long-delayed employment non-discrimination protections for LGBT workers.

Murphy concludes by saying that voters will have a large say in how these policies play out in future years.

The elections in 2012 will be a test as to whether we elect leaders who will deepen the economic crisis on the backs of the poor and middle class, or whether we choose people who care both about civil liberties and strengthening the economic conditions of a majority of Americans. We need to convince people to vote as if our lives and livelihood depend on it, because they do.

Read the entire essay here.