Occupy Louisville and the Justice Resource Center are holding a demonstration at Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell's office to protest against any domestic spending cuts as part of the fiscal cliff negotiations.
The negotiations in Washington to avoid the $607 billion combination of automatic spending cuts and tax increases continue with the end of the year deadline approaching.
This week the White House threatened to veto Speak John Boehner’s "plan B," which includes raising tax rates on Americans making over $1 million annually. House Republicans argue their plan avoids tax hikes on most income earners, but the Obama administration says it doesn't raise enough revenue and burdens the middle-class.
Ike Thacker is an Occupy Louisville spokesman. He says the groups oppose any cuts to social programs that help the poor and would prefer cuts to the defense department.
"The things that need to be cut are not social programs. We spend in the neighborhood of $20 to $30 billion on welfare and around $70 billion on food stamps, which means roughly speaking $100 billion. While we spend well over $1 trillion every year in one form or another on our military," he says. "If we want to go where the spending is to do the spending cuts it does not need to be in social programs, but in the military."
