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(H. Con. Res. 112) Establishing the Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2013 (Budget For All)

ipoole — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 10:23:48 -0400

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The Congressional Progressive Caucus's "Budget for All" offers the most dramatic contrast between the effort by House Republicans to double down on the failed conservative policies of the past and a contrasting approach that is our only real hope for rebuilding the middle class and getting the nation out from under the specter of crushing debt.
The Budget for All contains a long list of initiatives, more than $2 trillion worth, designed to put people to work doing jobs that need to be done, such as repairing schools, upgrading and expanding our transportation network, protecting our communities, providing health care and other services to those in need. The Republican budget would slash discretionary spending by $38 billion below the president's request in 2013, and by $352 billion over 10 years, reducing the money available for a broad range of job-creating initiatives.
In the short term, the Budget for All would increase the deficit more than either President Obama's proposed budget, and certainly more than the Republican budget. But it makes eminent sense to run a larger deficit now, when the economy is slack, borrowing costs are near zero, and unemployment is running well above 8 percent.
The Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream program in the Budget for All alone would put 2 million Americans back to work. That is on top of the millions of jobs created or maintained by a $556 billion surface transportation program, plus investments in clean energy. The Republican budget would cost the economy "roughly 1.3 million jobs lost in 2013 and 2.8 million jobs lost in 2014, or 4.1 million jobs through 2014," economist Ethan Pollock of the Economic Policy Institute estimates.
The Budget for All would bring the annual federal deficit down to less than 1 percent of gross domestic product in 10 years, compared to 1.2 percent projected by the Ryan Republican budget and the 5.3 percent of GDP the deficit would be if we maintained the status quo for the next 10 years. The cumulative debt would be reduced to 62.3 percent of GDP in 10 years.

The Budget for All offers deficit reduction of $6.8 trillion in 10 years. Some of that deficit reduction comes through cuts in defense spending, with a goal of "a leaner, more agile force" to combat 21st-century threats, rather than basing defense budgets on a long-over cold war.
But what is particularly important in how this budget deals with deficit reduction is how it deals with taxes.

The Budget for All stands for progressive taxation. The Republican budget cuts taxes for the 1 percent and shifts economic burdens to the 99 percent.

The Budget for All proposes to maintain today's tax rates—including the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts—for the bottom 98 percent of taxpayers. But for people earning more than $1 million a year, the Budget for All would create new, higher tax brackets, up to 49 percent for those earning more than $1 billion. It would also enshrine into law the "Buffett rule," taxing capital gains and other unearned income at the same rate as earned income.
The budget also includes "proposals to end manipulation of interest expenses of foreign subsidiaries, determine foreign tax credits on a pooling basis, crack down on transfers of intangible assets to tax havens, level the playing field between domestic and foreign insurers, and modify tax rules of dual capacity taxpayers, among others."
The pillars of our economic success lie in such things as good schools, safe streets, clean water and air, an efficient transportation network—and people who have economic security. The Ryan Republican plan forfeits all of this in order to give the wealth and corporations a top tax rate of 25 percent, then cutting the economic supports out of the rest of the economy.
That is a path to ruin, not a path to prosperity. The Budget for All would still keep tax rates for the wealthiest Americans below what they were during much of the Reagan administration. But the budget priorities that would be funded by these taxes would support a growing economy with a broadening middle class. Wealth for everyone would increase, as it did during much of post-World War II America before conservative policies took hold.
Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, summed it up this way: “The Budget for All exposes the folly of trying to achieve deficit reduction while offering the most affluent Americans trillions in top end tax cuts, as the Republican plan proposes. It exposes the lie that the country can’t afford to put people to work and still get our books in order. And it shows clearly that the nation can not only afford to protect Social Security and Medicare, but can’t afford not to. The Budget for All reflects the priorities of a majority of Americans in poll after poll. Those who oppose it trample both common sense and majority opinion.”

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(H.R. 2250) EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011

ipoole — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 11:40:06 -0400

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This bill is just one weapon in a sustained assault on the Environmental Protection Agency that conservatives have waged since Republicans took control of the House after the 2010 elections. A broader component of the assault was the so-called "TRAIN Act," a bill that would have put much of the EPA's rule-making on pause until a commission assessed the economic impact of EPA rules enacted since January 2009.

The attack on the EPA is driven by businesses that do not want to be held accountable for the impact of the pollutants they spew into the air. Indeed, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce notified lawmakers that their vote on the regulatory relief bill would be one of the "key votes" it would use to judge candidates.

The public interest in this legislation is clear: crippling the EPA means more sickness and death from unhealthy air, and less recourse for communities to fight back against polluters in their midst.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, this legislation would overturn multiple federal court decisions that ordered the EPA to strengthen its Clean Air Act rules and would eviscerate strong toxic air pollution standards that are needed to control dangerous dioxin, acid gas, and lead and mercury pollution generated by industrial boilers and incinerators.

The organization estimates that the inability of the EPA to impose more stringent clean air standards would lead each year to 9,000 additional premature deaths, more than 6,000 additional hospital and emergency room visits due to pollution-related illnesses, 58,000 additional asthma attacks and more than 110,000 cases of upper or lower respiratory system impairment. While advocates of the bill make the dubious claim that somehow weakening EPA regulations would lead to additional jobs—as opposed to the certainty of jobs that would be created through retrofitting plants to meet the higher clean air standards—the only sure outcome is that more workers will be too ill to show up at their jobs.

The one-sided conservative approach to clean air regulation—that all of the shots should be called by industry, within the limits of the costs they are willing to bear, without consideration of the health of the broader public—is fundamentally immoral and ultimately makes no economic sense. Business cannot prosper on a planet besieged by the effects of global warming and in a country of people sickened by polluted air and water. But if businesses and the lawmakers doing their bidding in Congress cannot see their long-term interest in protecting our air, then it is even more important for other lawmakers to fight vociferously for the health and safety of ordinary people, and the agency that is charged with the responsibility of safeguarding our environment.

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(S. 2343) Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012

ipoole — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 17:08:56 -0400

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If members of Congress were actually focused on middle-class priorities, this legislative debate would not include an argument over how to "pay for" keeping Stafford loan rates at 3.4 percent for an additional year.

Affordable college education is, or should be, a top national priority. The United States will not regain its footing as an economic powerhouse and as a healthy democracy if the only way a majority of young people can obtain a college degree is by shouldering a heavy millstone of debt that will weigh them down for decades after they graduate. The $6 billion that it would cost to keep the interest rate from doubling to 6.8 percent would be money well spent; its impact on the deficit is relatively inconsequential when compared to the long-term benefit to the country and the vitality of its economy. Nonetheless, a number of Republicans in Congress had been willing to allow the interest costs of more than 7.5 million college students increase by as much as $5,000 before the public outcry forced them to switch course and instead debate with Democrats over how to offset the impact on the deficit.

If there must be an argument over "paying for" keeping the loan interest rate stable, closing a tax loophole that allows wealthy professionals to use "S corporations" to shield their income from payroll taxes is a more meritorious approach than the House Republican proposal, also supported by Senate Republicans, that would have shut down a community health care and illness prevention program, politically targeted as part of the overall conservative assault on the Affordable Care Act.

Asking those at the top of the economic ladder to pay a little more so that those at the bottom of the ladder can climb up is common-sense economics and is morally right. But conservatives at every turn have shielded multimillionaires from any responsibility to sacrifice something to rebuild the foundations of broad middle-class prosperity, and this bill was no exception.

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(H.R. 4628) Interest Rate Reduction Act

ipoole — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 09:44:45 -0400

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The conservative shenanigans on this issue would be comical if it were not for the deadly serious ramifications of saddling students with more than $1 trillion in student debt—more debt than they and the entire rest of the nation have on their credit cards. If Stafford loan interest rates doubled, more than 7.5 million students would be affected, and an average student would end up owing an additional $5,000 on their loan.

On a Sunday morning talk show conservative columnist George Will said that the federal student loan program represented "a slow-motion, almost absentminded creation of a new entitlement"—as if bestowing the word "entitlement" on a student loan program made any sense at all and as if the taint of the "e-word" would make the program go away.

The correct response to Will and conservatives of his ilk is to simply say that making college affordable and accessible to every student is in the national interest. The United States will not regain its footing as an economic powerhouse and as a healthy democracy if the only way a majority of young people can obtain a college degree is by shouldering a heavy millstone of debt that will weigh them down for decades after they graduate. The $6 billion that it would cost to keep the interest rate from increasing to 6.8 percent would be money well spent; its impact on the deficit is relatively inconsequential.

When conservatives are not making idiotic statements about student loans being "entitlements" as Will did, or implying that students are racking up student debt because they are lazy and irresponsible, they are using the student loan issue as a pawn in a game of political posturing.

Republicans are insisting on cutting funding for preventative health care to offset the cost of freezing the interest rate level, in one of their numerous assaults on health care reform. An alternative approach to covering the cost proposed by Senate Democrats would close a loophole that allows some high earners from avoiding paying payroll taxes on some of their income. But conservatives reject this type of compromise. When Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. and the architect of the Republican budget, was asked at a student town hall meeting if he would "support closing corporate tax loopholes to pay for" maintaining student loan rates at their current level, Ryan said, "Nope," adding that since the student loan bill was "more spending, let’s cut spending that is lower-priority spending to address this higher-priority need."

In the conservative mind, keeping federal student loan rates at a percentage-point above the rate of general inflation amounts to "more spending" on an "entitlement," and improving the health of the American public is "lower priority" than, say, protecting multimillionaires from tax increases. That is nonsense. This step to make college more affordable is an investment in the future of the country, as important today as it was when post-World War II America committed to the GI Bill. This is a must-do in the struggle to rebuild the middle class.

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(H.R. 1315) Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2011

ipoole — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 14:21:46 -0400

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This bill would effectively render toothless the one government agency with the primary responsibility of safeguarding the interests of consumers in the financial marketplace, by making the director’s rulings subject to agency directors whose job it is to serve the interests of financial institutions, not consumers.

The motivation of the bill sponsors, and organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Bankers Association, is clear: The big banks fear the Consumer Financial Protection Agency because when it is effective bankers will not be able to get away with schemes that bilk consumers out of their hard-earned money. Within the first few months of the agency's operation, it forced Capital One to pay $140 million in refunds to credit card customers who were deceived into signing up for payment protection or credit monitoring services they did not want or need. It issued rules that require mortgage companies to make their disclosures more clear. It began policing payday lenders that have in the past charged usurious rates for small loans. And the agency has become a place where consumers can complain about illegal, unfair or deceptive behavior and be taken seriously.

The agencies that would be allowed a veto over the consumer agency's rulings have historically drawn their leadership from the very banking institutions they regulate, and are often captive to the interests of those institutions. That is precisely why there was a need to create a new agency whose sole constituency is the consumer of banking products, not the bankers themselves.

Of course, regulations should be written and enforced with the soundness of the regulated financial institutions in mind. But we have seen what happens when the soundness of consumers is trampled because financial institutions are not held accountable. Ultimately, an economy put into free fall because of unscrupulous behavior on Wall Street hurts not just working people taking out a mortgage or applying for a credit card; the financial sector is ultimately harmed as well. Working people need a cop on the financial beat whose actions are not going to be compromised by the security guards of those being policed.

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(H.R. 8) Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act of 2012

ipoole — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 11:49:49 -0400

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Refusing to allow the Bush tax cuts to end as scheduled for the top 2 percent of taxpayers not only helps worsen the deficit and force cuts in vital services. It also perpetuates fundamental economic inequity and exempts the wealthiest Americans from doing their fair share to repair the damage done by the economic crash.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, the top 1 percent of wage earners have received 38 percent of the tax savings from the Bush tax cuts, while the bottom 60 percent of wage earners — people making less than $68,000 a year — received less than 20 percent of the savings. In 2013, this legislation would mean an average of $25,000 more in the pockets of people in the top 1 percent of the income scale than they would have if the tax rates went back to pre-Bush levels. For those on the top 0.1 percent— people earning $2.5 million or more — that would mean on average an extra $140,516 cut from their tax bill.

The conservative argument is that these tax savings by the wealthiest Americans would be plowed into investments that produce jobs for Americans. But that has proven not to be true since the cuts were put in place. "The economic impact of cutting capital gains rates and lowering the top marginal tax rates never materialized for working families. Inflation-adjusted median weekly earnings fell by 2.3% during the 2002-07 economic expansion, which holds the distinction for being the worst economic expansion since World War II," EPI economist Andrew Fieldhouse wrote.

What would benefit working families is a concerted effort to build the foundations of a new economy, with investments in infrastructure, schools, job training, research and development, and strategic support for the industries of the future. And we can't afford to keep eroding the economic supports struggling households need to stay on their feet while the economy recovers. That requires a tax code in which everyone pays their fair share, in accordance with their means. It is right to ask those who have successfully weathered the economic storms of the past few years—indeed, in many cases, have profited handsomely in the wake of them—to return to the tax rates they paid in the 1990s, the last time the economy was strong and unemployment was low. That should be the first step toward an overhauled tax code that no longer allows corporations and the wealthy to game the system with tax shelters and lobbyist-written exemptions.

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(S. 3369) Democracy Is Strengthened by Casting Light On Spending in Elections Act of 2012

rraman — Thu, 26 Jul 2012 12:08:52 -0400

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In the face of the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, corporations and other organizations are now able to influence elections through the sheer power of money and spin. Thanks to the court's ruling, these corporate interests can spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections without disclosing the true sources of their money and the interests those sources represent.

Advocates of this no-holds-barred world of unrestricted money fabricated in the name of free speech say that the fact that unions and progressive institutions have the same right to play the money-is-speech game makes it all fair. But as a practical matter the voices of regular working people—who have a decreasing share of the nation's wealth to begin with—are being drowned out by institutions and moneyed interests who have the wherewithal to splurge on the most powerful microphones and loudest speakers.

The DISCLOSE Act is a small step toward campaign finance rules that make the electoral playing field fair for everyone. At the very least, people should know that an organization that spends millions of dollars to influence an election using a vague, benign-sounding name has a specific and perhaps not-so-benign agenda. When office-seekers are benefitting from a shadow campaign fed by unlimited cash from special interests, voters have a right to know what those interests are, and discern whether those interests authentically align with their own.

Interestingly, this legislation was filibustered by Republicans who have historically supported disclosure rules as an alternative to what they considered heavy-handed campaign finance limits.

Although this bill does not get at the heart of our deeply flawed campaign finance process, it is a step in allowing regular Americans to know the extent of corporate influence on our political system, and it will help hold politicians, big-money campaign spenders and Beltway insiders accountable for their actions.

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(S. 3412) A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide tax relief to middle-class families.

ipoole — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 15:19:26 -0400

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To quote Campaign for America's Future co-director Robert Borosage in his call on the Senate to support this bill, "It’s time we stop giving large tax cuts to those who need them the least at the expense of the middle- and lower-income Americans who are struggling to get by. The senators who vote for the bill today want to ensure that every American pays their fair share."

Ending the Bush tax cuts on household income above $250,000 would save the government nearly $1 trillion in the next decade, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation, compared to extending all of the cuts. Wealthy people earning more than $1 million a year get an average tax break of $143,000 from the Bush tax cuts, but middle-class people making about $50,000 a year get an average tax break of only $1,000, according to the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

“Opponents of this bill essentially argue that the rich have too little money and the poor have too much,” said Borosage. “When the rich get tax breaks they don’t need and the country can’t afford, the middle class has to make up the difference – that’s not right.”

Conservatives have been asking middle-class and low-income people to give up a broad range of essential programs and benefits. The one group that has not been asked to give up anything is the top 2 percent of Americans. We can't make the investments we need to strengthen our economy and bring down the deficit as long as congressional conservatives are hell-bent on exempting the wealthiest Americans from doing their fair share.

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(S. 3364) Bring Jobs Home Act

ipoole — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:03:52 -0400

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Once again, a bill that had majority (and nominally bipartisan) support in the Senate was filibustered by a minority bloc of rigid, extremist conservatives seemingly obsessed with protecting every business tax break, no matter how contrary to the nation's economic interests that tax break is.

The legislation itself is simple, and so is the principle: We should reward businesses that move jobs into the country, and not use tax dollars to support businesses that move jobs (and the tax revenues generated by those jobs) overseas.

When the business tax deduction was written into the tax code, we made a conscious decision to support business investment, under the presumption that the investment would be made to support American industry and jobs. That deduction was not written to give corporations a tax write-off for the costs of closing American operations, firing American workers, and then setting up the same operations in a low-wage country. If a business believes it must do that, it should do so on its own dime, not that of the taxpayers.

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(S. 3240) Agriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act (SNAP Benefits Amendment)

ipoole — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 16:39:12 -0400

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Democrats and Republicans are equally at fault here for crafting and supporting legislation that hurts the working poor and struggling middle-class families. Temporary government assistance is crucial for households that are hit by unemployment to feed children, see the doctor, and keep their homes heated.

More than 20 million families have enrolled in what is now the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program since 2007, which seems to shock Congress for some odd reason. Given the current economic climate, it would be logical for struggling Americans to turn to relief programs such as food stamps, and these programs are part of the reason that ordinary people are able to weather the vagaries of economic distress.

Even without these cuts, families receiving SNAP would have seen a monthly cut of $16 from their benefits starting in 2013, as a result of a 2010 budget deal. With the SNAP cuts, half a million families could stand to lose $90 a month in benefits because of language limiting the ability to use home-heating assistance eligibility to qualify for increased SNAP benefits. According to a Coalition on Human Needs report, "Because LIHEAP (Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program) funding is very limited, only about 20 percent of the eligible population receives home heating or cooling assistance, and those households receive very little. The provision prohibited in the Senate bill makes it possible for households getting very little in LIHEAP funds to receive higher SNAP benefits based on a reasonable estimate of their shelter costs (which include home energy)."

The only good news here is that defenders of the SNAP program successfully beat back amendments by republicans that would have had a more severe impact on low-income families. An amendment by Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., that would have converted the SNAP program to a block grant with dramatically reduced funding was rejected, 65-33. An amendment by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., that would have made as many as 3 million working poor people receiving child care or transportation assistance ineligible for SNAP benefits, and would have also knocked 280,000 children off the free school lunch program, was also defeated, 45-36.

Austerity measures aren't working for Europe, so why are we trying them over here? It is true that this bill laudably ends a lot of Big Farm subsidies, but the vast majority of "savings" are coming from cuts to important social programs. In a time of economic distress, Congress should not be starving a program vital to the survival of millions of families.

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(H. Con. Res. 112) Establishing the Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2013 (Budget For All)

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The Budget for All stands for progressive taxation. The Republican budget cuts taxes for the 1 percent and shifts economic burdens to the 99 percent.

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(H.R. 2250) EPA Regulatory Relief Act of 2011

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(S. 2343) Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012

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(H.R. 4628) Interest Rate Reduction Act

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(H.R. 1315) Consumer Financial Protection Safety and Soundness Improvement Act of 2011

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(H.R. 8) Job Protection and Recession Prevention Act of 2012

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