Tuesday, April 12, 2011

The People's Budget

The Congressional Progressive Caucus has put out a People's Budget to counter the GOP budget proposal.  The highlights of this proposal are:

The CPC budget:
• Eliminates the deficits and creates a surplus
• Puts America back to work with a “Make it in America” jobs program
• Protects the social safety net
• Ends the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
• Is FAIR (Fixing America’s Inequality Responsibly)

To summarize what our budget accomplishes:
• Primary budget balance by 2014.
• Budget surplus by 2021.
• Reduce public debt as a share of GDP to 64.4% by 2021, down 16.9 percentage points from
a baseline fully adjusted for both the doc fix and the AMT patch.
• Reduce deficits by $5.7 trillion over 2012-21
• Both outlays and revenue equal 22.3% of GDP by 2021.

Breakdown of Policies
Individual income tax policies
1. Extend marriage relief, credits, and incentives for children, families, and education, but
let the upper-income tax cuts expire and let tax brackets revert to Clinton-era rates
2. Index the AMT for inflation for a decade (AMT patch paid for)
3. Rescind the upper-income tax cuts in the tax deal
4. Schakowsky millionaire tax rates proposal (adding 45%, 46%, and 47% top rates)
5. Progressive estate tax (Sanders estate tax, repeal of Kyl-Lincoln)
6. Tax capital gains and qualified dividends as ordinary income

Corporate tax reform
1. Tax U.S. corporate foreign income as it is earned
2. Eliminate corporate welfare for oil, gas, and coal companies
3. Enact a financial crisis responsibility fee
4. Financial speculation tax (derivatives, foreign exchange)

Health care
1. Enact a public option
2. Negotiate Rx payments with pharmaceutical companies
3. CMS program integrity and other Medicare and Medicaid savings in the president’s
budget.
4. Prevent a cut in Medicare physician payments for a decade (maintain doc fix)

Social Security
1. Raise the taxable maximum on the employee side to 90% of earnings and eliminate the
taxable maximum on the employer side
2. Increase benefits based on higher contributions on the employee side
Defense savings
1. End overseas contingency operations emergency supplementals starting in 2013,
providing $170 billion in FY2012 funding for withdrawal
2. Reduce baseline Defense spending by reducing strategic capabilities, conventional
forces, procurement, and R&D programs

Job Creation
1. Invest $1.45 trillion in job creation, early childhood, K-12 and special education, quality
child care, energy and broadband infrastructure, housing, and R&D
2. Infrastructure bank
3. Surface transportation reauthorization bill
4. Finance surface transportation reauthorization

The "liberal" mainstream media has been all over the GOP proposal.  Where are they for this liberal democratic proposal?

7 comments:

  1. This sounds like a very sensible plan, but ultimately a lot of pointless work.

    Why not just cut programs that assist hungry children, elderly with failing health and any lower income person? Let's keep the Bush tax cuts, as a few of the more wealthy of the poor also get a few extra dollars and the extra money the rich get will trickle down the survivors if they wait a few hundred years?

    Why are you always picking on rich people? They need to eat too, right? This plan basically takes money from under the mattresses of the rich instead of taking poor people’s dinner and medicine. The poor already have a deficit. Are we now going after the only successful Americans? Do you want all Americans to be useless failures? Does this not worsen the problem?

    I learned this from Republicans. Before they schooled me, I thought just like you.

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  2. Yes, I see, John. After all, the poor are already suffering. Let's keep the suffering confined to them. Why spread it to the rich also.

    Silly me. What was I thinking?

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  3. I think this is the attitude we are supposed to have, sir. It is like quarantining a disease. The poor and helpless should save themselves. Why should I suffer? Keep your eye on what’s really important: me, me, and did in case I did not mention it, me!

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  4. A VERY sound plan which deserves our support!

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  5. That's an excellent plan. I would add one thing, for a particular reason. Lay on an across-the board 5 percent war tax surcharge on everyone with income 20 percent or more above poverty level.

    Why? Because doing so would surely speed an end to our costly, no-win Mideast wars. And that would likely be true even if the next president is a Republican.

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  6. I'd like to see complete elimination of SS payments to the very well off and wealthy. The rich don't need welfare handouts.

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