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With the event at the White House today, and the outlines of Obama's budget about to be delivered to Capitol Hill, the federal budget deficit is in the news this week
I agree with other progressive folks that squawking that our Social Security "crisis" is a hoax, that the solution to soaring entitlement cost is to reform and cut costs in health care, and that a reasonable amount of deficit spending -- as long as it goes into needed public investment -- does not overburden the economy. I would add that way too many of the so-called deficit hawks in the blue dog caucus have no problem defending excessive military spending along with big corporate loopholes and subsidies, which tends to make one take their arguments less seriously. But I also believe that the deficits run up by George Bush combined with the new deficit spending we have to do to save the economy from total collapse are a big problem, both policy wise and politically. I think it is important for us to come up with a strong progressive plan for reducing the deficit while continuing to make the investments we need in public purposes. I think the plan should adhere to the progressive values our movement embraces, the values that motivated the thinking of Jefferson, Paine, and Lincoln. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and other great progressive leaders of our history: equal opportunity for all, fairness, a sense of community, and investing in a broadly prosperous middle class instead of trickledown for the rich. Such a budget proposal would include the following elements
1. Ending tax loopholes for big business. The tax code is riddled with special tax loopholes. David Cay Johnston has laid out one after another on every level of government that serves no public interest at all. If we cracked down on wealthy tax cheats, stopped allowing businesses to have one set of books for the IRS and another for stockholders, blocked financial transactions with foreign governments with secret bank accounts, ended tax shelters for offshore investments, ended unfair utility writeoffs, and stopped subsidizing corporate jets, the federal government would have hundreds of billions of dollars per year in more revenue
2. Ending federal subsidies for big business and corporate agriculture. Aside from the mess that is the TARP, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of direct federal subsidies going into all kinds of business enterprises. One big example is agribusiness: according to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10 recipients- massive agribusiness corporations- got 72% of the $143.5 billion US taxpayers paid to farmers over the past ten years. And just seven states took in half of that money, because only those states produce the corn, wheat, rice and cotton crops that account for 78% of the subsidies. Meanwhile, two-thirds of American's farmers and ranchers receive no direct government support.
3. Rein in defense spending. Hopefully we really will be spending less and less money in Iraq, which is of course a great start; and I pray that we aren't heading into another long term and incredibly costly quagmire in Afghanistan, but only time will tell. Beyond those two areas of expenditures, the military is still wasting all kinds of money on expensive weapon system boondoggles that have little value; spending $100 billion a year maintaining and warehousing thousands of nuclear weapons, most of which are not needed to safeguard us; and just the everyday waste that comes with having no serious oversight of their spending requests for a very long time. Back in 2007, the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus put out a report called "Just Security," which proposed $213 billion in cuts, including $99.1 billion from the war on Iraq, $45.9 billion in cuts to overseas bases, $10.8 billion in overseas military "aid," $7 billion in waste and fraud, $5 billion in force structure, $2 billion in recruitment, and $43.9 billion in unnecessary weapons.
4. Driving down health care costs. True health care reform is going to drive down the health care costs of Medicare and Medicaid by negotiating on drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, stopping insurance and drug company profiteering, investing in prevention and other quality improvements, brining medical records online, and getting better information of which treatment methods are most effective. All of these reforms will drive down government spending because of health care inflation significantly over the long run. Health care inflation has generally been 2-3 times that of general inflation over many years. But it is also true that progressives should not shy away from two simple words in health care: price controls. Free market economies in health care have been badly broken for a long time, and by putting price controls on drugs and insurance costs, we don't endanger anything in health delivery other than the obscene profits being made in recent years by drug and insurance companies.
5. Increasing taxes on the wealthy. Our country's most sustained period of economic prosperity started once FDR lifted us out of the great depression and continued through the early 1970s. In those years, we had steep progressive income taxes on the wealthy. After massive tax cuts for the rich in both the Reagan years, and then again under Bush over the last eight years, it's time to go back to a system of progressive taxation where the wealthy actually pay more in taxes than the poor people.
These progressive principles on a plan to bring the budget deficit back under control adhere to the progressive policies and values of the best in American history, and achieve fiscal sanity without hurting the poor and working families who have been most hurt by the conservative economic policies of recent years. The numbers add up.
I get extremely tired of hearing Blue Dog Democrats and hypocritical Republicans yammering about the need for everyone to make sacrifices in terms of entitlements and the budged deficits when the policies that they have supported in the past have required sacrifices mostly of the poor and middle class, while doing almost nothing to cause the same kind of sacrifice from their corporate and wealthy donors. There is a progressive way to bring fiscal responsibility back to our federal budget, a path that embraces progressive values of taking care of the poor and investing in a prosperous middle class and equal opportunity for all. Let's choose that kind of path, for the first time in a very long time.
With the event at the White House today, and the outlines of Obama's budget about to be delivered to Capitol Hill, the federal budget deficit is in the news this week
I agree with other progressive folks that squawking that our Social Security "crisis" is a hoax, that the solution to soaring entitlement cost is to reform and cut costs in health care, and that a reasonable amount of deficit spending -- as long as it goes into needed public investment -- does not overburden the economy. I would add that way too many of the so-called deficit hawks in the blue dog caucus have no problem defending excessive military spending along with big corporate loopholes and subsidies, which tends to make one take their arguments less seriously. But I also believe that the deficits run up by George Bush combined with the new deficit spending we have to do to save the economy from total collapse are a big problem, both policy wise and politically. I think it is important for us to come up with a strong progressive plan for reducing the deficit while continuing to make the investments we need in public purposes. I think the plan should adhere to the progressive values our movement embraces, the values that motivated the thinking of Jefferson, Paine, and Lincoln. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and other great progressive leaders of our history: equal opportunity for all, fairness, a sense of community, and investing in a broadly prosperous middle class instead of trickledown for the rich. Such a budget proposal would include the following elements
1. Ending tax loopholes for big business. The tax code is riddled with special tax loopholes. David Cay Johnston has laid out one after another on every level of government that serves no public interest at all. If we cracked down on wealthy tax cheats, stopped allowing businesses to have one set of books for the IRS and another for stockholders, blocked financial transactions with foreign governments with secret bank accounts, ended tax shelters for offshore investments, ended unfair utility writeoffs, and stopped subsidizing corporate jets, the federal government would have hundreds of billions of dollars per year in more revenue
2. Ending federal subsidies for big business and corporate agriculture. Aside from the mess that is the TARP, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of direct federal subsidies going into all kinds of business enterprises. One big example is agribusiness: according to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10 recipients- massive agribusiness corporations- got 72% of the $143.5 billion US taxpayers paid to farmers over the past ten years. And just seven states took in half of that money, because only those states produce the corn, wheat, rice and cotton crops that account for 78% of the subsidies. Meanwhile, two-thirds of American's farmers and ranchers receive no direct government support.
3. Rein in defense spending. Hopefully we really will be spending less and less money in Iraq, which is of course a great start; and I pray that we aren't heading into another long term and incredibly costly quagmire in Afghanistan, but only time will tell. Beyond those two areas of expenditures, the military is still wasting all kinds of money on expensive weapon system boondoggles that have little value; spending $100 billion a year maintaining and warehousing thousands of nuclear weapons, most of which are not needed to safeguard us; and just the everyday waste that comes with having no serious oversight of their spending requests for a very long time. Back in 2007, the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus put out a report called "Just Security," which proposed $213 billion in cuts, including $99.1 billion from the war on Iraq, $45.9 billion in cuts to overseas bases, $10.8 billion in overseas military "aid," $7 billion in waste and fraud, $5 billion in force structure, $2 billion in recruitment, and $43.9 billion in unnecessary weapons.
4. Driving down health care costs. True health care reform is going to drive down the health care costs of Medicare and Medicaid by negotiating on drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, stopping insurance and drug company profiteering, investing in prevention and other quality improvements, brining medical records online, and getting better information of which treatment methods are most effective. All of these reforms will drive down government spending because of health care inflation significantly over the long run. Health care inflation has generally been 2-3 times that of general inflation over many years. But it is also true that progressives should not shy away from two simple words in health care: price controls. Free market economies in health care have been badly broken for a long time, and by putting price controls on drugs and insurance costs, we don't endanger anything in health delivery other than the obscene profits being made in recent years by drug and insurance companies.
5. Increasing taxes on the wealthy. Our country's most sustained period of economic prosperity started once FDR lifted us out of the great depression and continued through the early 1970s. In those years, we had steep progressive income taxes on the wealthy. After massive tax cuts for the rich in both the Reagan years, and then again under Bush over the last eight years, it's time to go back to a system of progressive taxation where the wealthy actually pay more in taxes than the poor people.
These progressive principles on a plan to bring the budget deficit back under control adhere to the progressive policies and values of the best in American history, and achieve fiscal sanity without hurting the poor and working families who have been most hurt by the conservative economic policies of recent years. The numbers add up.
I get extremely tired of hearing Blue Dog Democrats and hypocritical Republicans yammering about the need for everyone to make sacrifices in terms of entitlements and the budged deficits when the policies that they have supported in the past have required sacrifices mostly of the poor and middle class, while doing almost nothing to cause the same kind of sacrifice from their corporate and wealthy donors. There is a progressive way to bring fiscal responsibility back to our federal budget, a path that embraces progressive values of taking care of the poor and investing in a prosperous middle class and equal opportunity for all. Let's choose that kind of path, for the first time in a very long time.
Before I read all of the article I read the number 5 item first. I got a little sick reading that part but next I read the part about health care and just couldn't go on. I promise to come back and look at the rest when I get to feeling better.
I keep wondering why increasing taxes on the wealthy will make those at the bottom of the monetary chain pay any less in taxes. When you get lower than about 50% you find that most of the people don't pay any income taxes so how will taxing the wealth higher rates help them? Is it that they could get larger refunds than those earned income checks they get? If they have had taxes withheld but get them all back because they didn't make enough to pay taxes will they get more back? I just can't fathom people accepting that political Pelosi (the word I use instead of BS) about helping the bottom 50% of our people by taxing the wealthy at a higher rate.
Here is an example. In the days when I paid withholding and my wife and I claimed no independents for withholding purposes we never got any kind of refund. Since I went on Social Security 14 years ago I have had to pay quarterly estimates as if I was in business and still never get any kind of refund. I just can't understand this progressive Pelosi about how taxing the wealthy more will help those at the bottom. Could you explain some of that to me, please?
That is the new Welfare. "Lowering" taxes for those who don't pay any. Gotta' love the creative ways the pinkos get their bull through.
I like how they use the term "progressive" though, really funny. They are about the most regressive group of people around. They look back to the good old days of Stalin...idiots.
With the event at the White House today, and the outlines of Obama's budget about to be delivered to Capitol Hill, the federal budget deficit is in the news this week
I agree with other progressive folks that squawking that our Social Security "crisis" is a hoax, that the solution to soaring entitlement cost is to reform and cut costs in health care, and that a reasonable amount of deficit spending -- as long as it goes into needed public investment -- does not overburden the economy. I would add that way too many of the so-called deficit hawks in the blue dog caucus have no problem defending excessive military spending along with big corporate loopholes and subsidies, which tends to make one take their arguments less seriously. But I also believe that the deficits run up by George Bush combined with the new deficit spending we have to do to save the economy from total collapse are a big problem, both policy wise and politically. I think it is important for us to come up with a strong progressive plan for reducing the deficit while continuing to make the investments we need in public purposes. I think the plan should adhere to the progressive values our movement embraces, the values that motivated the thinking of Jefferson, Paine, and Lincoln. Roosevelt, Martin Luther King and other great progressive leaders of our history: equal opportunity for all, fairness, a sense of community, and investing in a broadly prosperous middle class instead of trickledown for the rich. Such a budget proposal would include the following elements
1. Ending tax loopholes for big business. The tax code is riddled with special tax loopholes. David Cay Johnston has laid out one after another on every level of government that serves no public interest at all. If we cracked down on wealthy tax cheats, stopped allowing businesses to have one set of books for the IRS and another for stockholders, blocked financial transactions with foreign governments with secret bank accounts, ended tax shelters for offshore investments, ended unfair utility writeoffs, and stopped subsidizing corporate jets, the federal government would have hundreds of billions of dollars per year in more revenue
2. Ending federal subsidies for big business and corporate agriculture. Aside from the mess that is the TARP, there are hundreds of millions of dollars of direct federal subsidies going into all kinds of business enterprises. One big example is agribusiness: according to the Environmental Working Group, the top 10 recipients- massive agribusiness corporations- got 72% of the $143.5 billion US taxpayers paid to farmers over the past ten years. And just seven states took in half of that money, because only those states produce the corn, wheat, rice and cotton crops that account for 78% of the subsidies. Meanwhile, two-thirds of American's farmers and ranchers receive no direct government support.
3. Rein in defense spending. Hopefully we really will be spending less and less money in Iraq, which is of course a great start; and I pray that we aren't heading into another long term and incredibly costly quagmire in Afghanistan, but only time will tell. Beyond those two areas of expenditures, the military is still wasting all kinds of money on expensive weapon system boondoggles that have little value; spending $100 billion a year maintaining and warehousing thousands of nuclear weapons, most of which are not needed to safeguard us; and just the everyday waste that comes with having no serious oversight of their spending requests for a very long time. Back in 2007, the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy In Focus put out a report called "Just Security," which proposed $213 billion in cuts, including $99.1 billion from the war on Iraq, $45.9 billion in cuts to overseas bases, $10.8 billion in overseas military "aid," $7 billion in waste and fraud, $5 billion in force structure, $2 billion in recruitment, and $43.9 billion in unnecessary weapons.
4. Driving down health care costs. True health care reform is going to drive down the health care costs of Medicare and Medicaid by negotiating on drug prices with pharmaceutical companies, stopping insurance and drug company profiteering, investing in prevention and other quality improvements, brining medical records online, and getting better information of which treatment methods are most effective. All of these reforms will drive down government spending because of health care inflation significantly over the long run. Health care inflation has generally been 2-3 times that of general inflation over many years. But it is also true that progressives should not shy away from two simple words in health care: price controls. Free market economies in health care have been badly broken for a long time, and by putting price controls on drugs and insurance costs, we don't endanger anything in health delivery other than the obscene profits being made in recent years by drug and insurance companies.
5. Increasing taxes on the wealthy. Our country's most sustained period of economic prosperity started once FDR lifted us out of the great depression and continued through the early 1970s. In those years, we had steep progressive income taxes on the wealthy. After massive tax cuts for the rich in both the Reagan years, and then again under Bush over the last eight years, it's time to go back to a system of progressive taxation where the wealthy actually pay more in taxes than the poor people.
These progressive principles on a plan to bring the budget deficit back under control adhere to the progressive policies and values of the best in American history, and achieve fiscal sanity without hurting the poor and working families who have been most hurt by the conservative economic policies of recent years. The numbers add up.
I get extremely tired of hearing Blue Dog Democrats and hypocritical Republicans yammering about the need for everyone to make sacrifices in terms of entitlements and the budged deficits when the policies that they have supported in the past have required sacrifices mostly of the poor and middle class, while doing almost nothing to cause the same kind of sacrifice from their corporate and wealthy donors. There is a progressive way to bring fiscal responsibility back to our federal budget, a path that embraces progressive values of taking care of the poor and investing in a prosperous middle class and equal opportunity for all. Let's choose that kind of path, for the first time in a very long time.
Anyone who thinks that corporate interests haven't had things largely their way over the past two decades is living in some alternate reality. It's time for that pendulum to swing back towards the center.
Hehe. Look at the members of the "progressive majority" which the kook, er CEO, of the above Communist organization is a member. These people are as far from the center as any group you could possibly imagine.
They are about as center as their comrades in the "progressive" caucus. Well I guess it would depend on what left and right are to be honest. Sure, they could be the "center" between the USSR and China
Anyone who thinks that corporate interests haven't had things largely their way over the past two decades is living in some alternate reality. It's time for that pendulum to swing back towards the center.
Take more from the right and give to the left who contribute nothing.
Before I read all of the article I read the number 5 item first. I got a little sick reading that part but next I read the part about health care and just couldn't go on. I promise to come back and look at the rest when I get to feeling better.
I keep wondering why increasing taxes on the wealthy will make those at the bottom of the monetary chain pay any less in taxes. When you get lower than about 50% you find that most of the people don't pay any income taxes so how will taxing the wealth higher rates help them? Is it that they could get larger refunds than those earned income checks they get? If they have had taxes withheld but get them all back because they didn't make enough to pay taxes will they get more back? I just can't fathom people accepting that political Pelosi (the word I use instead of BS) about helping the bottom 50% of our people by taxing the wealthy at a higher rate.
Here is an example. In the days when I paid withholding and my wife and I claimed no independents for withholding purposes we never got any kind of refund. Since I went on Social Security 14 years ago I have had to pay quarterly estimates as if I was in business and still never get any kind of refund. I just can't understand this progressive Pelosi about how taxing the wealthy more will help those at the bottom. Could you explain some of that to me, please?
The problem is that the so-called "progressives" (the new term for "socialist") have no clue what drives an economy (business, and people who invest in them). They do not understand the meaning of "wealth creation", and in fact believe that there is only so much to go around (to put it simply). In other words, they believe that one persons wealth is the result of another persons loss. They actually do believe that those at the top are responsible for the state of those at the bottom. That is why they always refer to the wealthy as "greedy".
There are many of them that post on the C-D Forum. You can recognize them at once (this poster isn't even hiding it). What they post makes no sense whatsoever, to those of us who understand how markets and the economy work.They do not understand that individuals create wealth for themselves by hard work. To them, the so-called "white collar" people earn their money "on the backs of the "workers" (how many times have you heard that from Union types?).
These people will destroy us if given the chance (and Obama is one, and he has been given the chance, sadly).
This is what we are up against, and next to the war on terror, we are going to once again have to defeat socialism/communism.
That is the new Welfare. "Lowering" taxes for those who don't pay any. Gotta' love the creative ways the pinkos get their bull through.
I like how they use the term "progressive" though, really funny. They are about the most regressive group of people around. They look back to the good old days of Stalin...idiots.
You've got it right. There is nothing "progressive" about their philosophy at all.
When you think of it, Americas founders were way ahead of their time. It is an absolute wonder, that they were able to create the country and the government that they did. These were ordinary men (or so it seemed), but their ideas were very lofty, and they pledged their lives and their fortunes for the freedom that we have enjoyed for so many years.
We dare not let these so-called "progressives" take it from us.
Wise up America, and realize who these people are, and what they are up to. Defeat them when you encounter their names at the polls. Write letters to the editor of your local newspapers. Expose them for who they are every chance you get.
Unfortunately, our "government" (so-called "public") schools and the teachers union are infested with these idiots. But if we open our eyes to what's been going on in America for the last 40 years (maybe more) they can be defeated ... again.
McCarthy was right!
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